The most valuable prep tip is to nurture your marriage. As the liberal global elite convenes on Davos this month for their annual World Economic Forum meeting to further efforts for a “Great Reset”, we are giving tips on how to help your family thrive during “The Great Transition”. Get the practical marriage tips you need to strengthen your marriage even more so that you can help your family thrive.

Main Points in This Episode:

1. Grow your resiliency by being in the world, growing your capacity, don’t wish for the past, and walk in Biblical wisdom.
2. Communicate more and initiate deep conversations.
3. Make sure you grow a strong community around you. It’s one thing to have people you know and another to run the race in deep friendships with other families.
4. Run the race with like-minded people.
5. Do the people you spend time with strengthen your marriage or hurt it?
6. Discuss finances and never keep challenging financial information from your spouse.
7. Care for each other’s hearts and needs.

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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. Hi everyone. Welcome to the podcast.

Hey guys. Welcome back to another one of the real and raw conversations.

Absolutely. So we’re talking about marriage tips for the great transition. You know about that if you heard our last episode, but if not, we’ll explain it a little bit.

It was on parenting during the Great Transition and that podcast. We got so much awesome feedback. People seem to really, really love that podcast, so we thought that we would just share some more, but this time from the perspective of marriage.

So it stands alone, even if you haven’t heard of the last one. But go check it out if you have it too. That’d be fun. And it’s so important that we speak biblical truth and we think about all of us biblical truth in relation to the times we’re in, because we have a huge jurisdiction as parents, as spouses, which is what we’re talking about today.

That’s right. So today we have some an encouraging well, an encouraging conversation. Isaac and I went through as we love dry race boards, I even still have my expo pin if you’re watching us on rumble here. But you know, honestly, one of the things that really hit us hard and I hope that you hear me out on this, if there’s there’s a couple of things that are like crucial that we hope you walk away with. This is one of them. Overwhelm can happen, right? When you start thinking about all the things that you potentially want to do, when you become aware and you have your eyes open and you’re reading the word and and you’re going, oh, okay. Rumors of wars, wars and rumors of wars, famines, pestilence. Yeah, these things are happening in our world today. And you look down at your little kids and you love them so much, you would die for them. You just want to take care of them. You want them to love Jesus, you want to disciple them. And then there’s this huge distraction in some regards of this, right, called what’s really happening in the world and the fact that we have a jurisdiction to take care of our kids. Right. And that can be overwhelming for some people. Yeah. And so we wanted to talk about that because you can’t do everything.

You can’t and you shouldn’t be expected to. We shouldn’t expect our spouses to be able to do and provide for everything that we can think of. Right.

But you can do something. Yeah. And more more importantly than anything is that we all should be trusting the Lord. But in trusting the Lord, that doesn’t mean that we don’t do things right. And so it’s kind of like we trust the Lord to provide our food for the next day, but we also still go to the grocery store and buy food for the next day as well. Right. And so there’s a responsibility, there’s wisdom. And as we are walking this out as adults and we’re trying to be walking in alignment with what God’s word says, activated by the Holy Spirit using wisdom, there’s a lot to navigate and it can be overwhelming. So we’re going to talk about that today. But before we do, we wanted to say thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you. For everybody who shared last week that was super, super encouraging to see how last week’s podcast and other podcasts have impacted you. I know someone reached out to me today that had just listened to one of the podcasts on three things you should never say in your parenting. Oh, that was such a good episode. We had a lot of that. Yeah. Anyway, so whenever people share that kind of stuff of previous podcast and they share with me a personal message, I’m just I’m touched.

It is Spurs, it’s on. And as you guys know, we’re full time ministry. So everything you do helps and impacts it in a positive way, whether it’s sharing written comments on iTunes, five star reviews, purchasing things that courageous parenting or courageous moms. From our stores, we have merch mugs, shirts, hats stand firm. My stand firm, though, if you’re watching the video, you’re like, Isaac, why is your hat getting so dry?

For the record, wifey poo here wanted to clean it.

Yeah, she did. And I go, Well, I think I’ll just keep this as my work hat.

So this is his outside.

It’s supposed to be my farming hat. Not like podcasting hat. So I’m going to have to get a new one for the podcast.

Oh, bummer.

Yeah. And it was a stand firm one has become my favorite hat. But anyways, you can check out stores at Resolute MSN.com and Courageous Parenting, Courageous Mom and all of that. So we thank you so much. We’re going to dive in. So what is the great transition and what’s something we just came up with? Simple thing because of the globalists there, actually, I believe this month meeting in Davos, they meet every year, which is the global elite liberal agenda, people who really want to usher in a different kind of world. And you see the remnants and the evidence of this everywhere. And it’s not a conspiracy theory because they literally call it a great reset themselves. So that is the focus driven by Klaus Schwab, KLA, US and Schwab. You can look that up. So anyways, we’re not going to go into that again. You can listen to the last podcast, but we’re going to talk about in terms of marriage. What should we be thinking about and doing with our marriage to make sure we thrive and glorify God well during this time.

So when you think, Isaac, you just said the key, the single most key aspect to marriage, whenever people ask us about marriage stuff, we always go back to what is the purpose of marriage? It’s kind of like the same thing that when you’re talking to an anybody else and they ask you, you know, what you’re doing or why you’re doing what you’re doing, well, our purpose for even living is to glorify God or marriages are to glorify God. I think Gary Thomas said it best in his book Sacred Marriage, where he says Marriage is not about making you happy, it’s about making you holy. And that is a sanctifying journey. And each one of us are on that. And I think at the end of the day, the most important thing that we can do, if we could do anything right, I mean, our is walk out marriage our marriage relationship in a way that glorifies God. And one of the ways that we can do that is by having a resilient marriage.

Right.

Not ending the marriage. Right. And not just surviving the marriage either. We’ve done podcasts on this in the past. The difference between surviving and thriving and that when you have Christ as the center, you can thrive even through the hardest trials and struggles in your life. And recognizing that that is actually that testimony that you’re walking out, even if you say nothing brings God glory. And when you do say something and you’re able to share those stories, you’re bringing God, glory. And when your kids are watching, you walk it out, you’re bringing God glory. And so here we are with the on the onset of or in the midst of potential great transition, we want to bring God, glory and our marriage. And the best way we can do that is by having a posture of a resilient marriage, one that is going to stand through trials.

And there’s already an attack on marriage, right? Yeah. Anybody that’s married feels it. And one of the attacks is our own selfishness, right? So but during the great transition, there can be potentially different pressure, external pressure on marriages that hasn’t been felt as strongly before. There could be loss.

Of a job.

The loss of a job or financial challenge, or obviously with COVID weirdness. We, you know, some people around the country in the world experienced severe lockdowns in shifting to working from home and all kinds of.

Things that change.

Change is a big word. And resiliency, as Andrew was talking about, is so vital for that. So we’re going to dive into that. I think we should just explore this word resilience for a second because you’re going to be hearing this word more and more and more from people, because it’s going to be vital for thriving in this period of time and as we move forward. And so really, you have to one of the things about resilience, being resilient is welcoming change. So if you’re somebody that has a difficulty with change, then that’s something you want to pray about and you want to think about. And spouses should talk to each other because usually one of the spouses is deals with change differently than other one. And that might be the case where it might be the same. And so you really have to spur each other on. That’s part of the marriage discussion is how are you guys doing individually as being resilient and how are you guys doing together? Is your marriage.

Resilient as well? And then you relisten to last week’s podcast on parenting and you go, Okay, is our family going to be resilient? Because that’s another way we can glorify God. And so I think that this all is it’s all encompassing, right? Like God is the great designer and he created us for relationships where we’re beings that will one day experience eternity with him if we have received the the grace and forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I just look at the the bigger picture of all of that’s going on right now is we have a great opportunity to evangelize, to share the truth about Jesus Christ with other people. But a lot of times I think that people feel like they’re not doing what they could be doing when it comes to evangelism, because the thought of even trying to do that could potentially seem overwhelming to them. If their marriages are not doing well, if their families are not doing well, they’re like, How could I lead somebody else to the Lord if I can’t even do this right? Or you know what I mean? And so I think that this is an important topic because we want to be resilient and strong in the Lord. Standing firm like Isaac was talking about is that standing firm in the Lord like it says in Ephesians six, so that we can do what God put us here on Earth to do. Amen.

Yeah.

So as we’re diving into this topic of resilience in just individually but also in marriage, we have a list of some bullet points here that we want to share with you guys because there’s resiliency can mean a lot of different things. And Isaac had some amazing insights, so why don’t you just start sharing?

Well, I think resilience means the ability to adapt, to change, to challenges happening, to stay positive, to have an attitude of we’ll find a way to be able to take hits, if you will. Well, when those things happen. Obviously, the greatest tool that we have is God’s word to be resilient. So it doesn’t need to be a character trait. Actually, in us. It can be something, a muscle. We work in our relationship with God by reading his word, and I think that’s super important. And what’s really cool is we all have certain capacities for what we can handle, and God does give us more than we can handle because He wants to get the glory for the outcomes so that more people know his name. Right? So if if it was the case where he never gave you more than you could handle, then you could always take the credit for it. So think about that. And I challenge you to find any scripture that would say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, because that would be a misrepresentation of that.

Scripture says in in your weakness, he is strong and that if you just even think on that, that topic alone, it’s in our inadequacies that he is glorified, right? That he is strong. And so I think that there is an element of humility that’s required for a believer to understand that when we’re talking about being resilient in a great transition and people getting overwhelmed by different things, you don’t have to do it all, actually. Yeah. And so and that’s not an expectation that God has of you. And so to be freed from any potential expectations that you or the world or other people are putting on you, and just go to the word and pray and seek the Holy Spirit and ask him, Lord, what does this mean for me? That is an important, important thing. But understanding that God calls other people to other things too.

And if we keep ourselves too sheltered, actually, if we don’t embrace the challenges and from a biblical perspective, our capacity actually stays static. And what happens if we the more we grow and we handle adversity well and we come out the other side stronger. Right. And then we look back and those problems that we used to think were big as we look back, as God helped us overcome them and work through them, they actually look a little smaller, don’t they? Because now we can handle more. Our capacity for what we can handle is actually grown. And you know, when we’re including God in the picture, then our capacity becomes huge because God’s capacity is. Infinite, right? And ours is finite. But with him we can do all kinds of things. And so I just want to remember, I want us all to remember that as times and things get challenging, our kids are watching our marriage and they’re watching how each of us respond. And we want to be examples of a resilient marriage because what do we want for them in a more difficult, potentially future? When they get married. We want them to look forward to marriage because of how they see us. Our love for one another, but also how we handle the times we’re in.

Mm hmm.

What do you think?

Well, I think that there’s a need for us all to have a perspective of trying to embrace change, embrace growth, embrace this concept of, oh, things are harder. So instead of running away from it or trying to hide from it, we look at it as an opportunity to grow, actually. I talk about that in redeeming childbirth, regarding like just even being pregnant and then leading to the labor and delivery. And then in young motherhood. And one of the chapters is that pregnancy is a boot camp for motherhood. That’s one of the titles of in the book, and it’s a very.

Motivational book, actually.

But this aspect of recognizing that every thing that we come across in life, every trial, every suffering, every pain, every persecution is a potential opportunity for growth and running towards it versus trying to hide from it, ignore it, sweep it under the carpet, whatever you whatever you want to call it. We need to have a perspective, an attitude. Actually, it’s a hard attitude to not try to run from it and escape the change or the growth opportunity, but to embrace it.

And one of the things that’s interesting on resiliency is people that have a low resiliency or where there’s opportunity potentially and you can audit yourself is when if if things are harder or different in a way that you don’t like. We revert back in our minds to the times where we did like it. Oh, I’ve done so everybody’s done it. But the frequency at which you do it is a difference maker. And so we have to hold our thoughts captive, right? As Scripture says, we have to literally go, No, I’m not going. It’s okay to think about the past for other reasons, but not for this reason. It actually perpetuates a low resilience when you’re wishing things were easier, like the past. Instead, we just need to wish we were stronger, right? In a way, I don’t know if that came out right, but we should. We should instead focus forward and go, How can I grow? How can God take me through this? And I think that’s a much stronger position.

Yeah. I mean, I think that what when I listen to what you were just sharing, you’ve said things to me before, like and are are you really wanting to go backwards or do you want to move forward and that desire. And in taking that desire before the Lord and asking him to show you where you can grow. Right? And so, again, it goes back to a heart posture before the Lord and going in prayer to him. And as we’re seeking after him and we’re searching the Scriptures, we’re hopeful that God is going to do the work in us as we do what He’s called us to do as Christians. And we know what he’s called us to do as Christians because we’re reading his word. And so as we’re living out what he’s called us to do, we walk with hope that he’s going to bring the increase, that he’s going to bring the the growth that he says he I mean, it says in his word that he is the one who brings increase. And so I think that there is an element there of being honest before the Lord that’s required and sharing with him the places where you’re scared, the places where you’re maybe potentially struggling with anxiety or stress. I even think about Philippians chapter four in the Times when I walked through really hard times.

I’ve shared this before in previous podcasts, where Philippians chapter four, where literally God is commanding us as Christians. He’s giving us, if you will, a tiny equation. He doesn’t do that very often, but he gives us a little equation for coming to him with Thanksgiving in prayer and supplication in all circumstances. And then he will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and he helps us to take our thoughts captive. How much better is it that He does that than we do, even though he calls us to do it as well? And so I just think about those times when you’re going through a hard time. Well, for someone who’s potentially looking and being aware of what’s going on in the world and maybe, maybe one spouse is doing that more than another spouse. Right. And and they’re going, okay, what can we do to be prepared? And maybe the other spouse is like, I’m overwhelmed by that. I don’t want to talk about that. You can worry about that. Maybe there’s some married couples that are in that dynamic. And if that is so, then we need to come to each other and privately to the Lord, like together, to the Lord and privately to the Lord, praying for our spouse to become more resilient, we need to be encouraging them in ways that they can be resilient men.

One thing that I know that for me as a wife, I can speak for the wives. One thing that’s been encouraging for me is when Isaac washes me in the word. And what I mean by that is he’ll remind me of what the Bible says in those times when I’m having a hard time taking my own thoughts captive. It’s happened. And there are times to where Isaac will also get in places where, like both of us have experienced that stress that comes from just having so much on our plate to where we’ve had to sit down together and recalibrate together. What plates we’re spinning, what plates need to be sat down for the time being, and we need to focus and get some things done on the other plates. Right. And and sometimes that’s how you work together as a married couple to encourage one that’s maybe not as resilient, maybe allowing thoughts to disturb them, maybe allowing stress or anxiety to enter in. You want to take them to the word, you want to remind them of the word. You want to pray with them, pray for them, but then also call them up, like lead them up.

So amen.

Huge, huge encouragement. Another big thing with resilience, we talked about capacity, talked about being centered on the truth, which we have a scripture for you guys in second Corinthians chapter ten, verse five, which says We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Being ready to to punish every disobedience when you’re just when your obedience is complete. This is a call for us as Christians to literally it says we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. We destroy arguments raised against the truth that’s found in the Word of God. We have to be centered on the truth and not only centered on the truth. By knowing it, we have to be willing to go to war to protect the truth. Right. And so the reality is, is that there is a war on the truth, that is that we are supposed to be teaching. There is a war on what is right and what is good and what is noble and what is pleasing. I don’t know if any of you guys are on social media, but if you just even scroll through social media briefly, there’s a lot of negativity, isn’t there? It almost feels like there is a spiritual battle becoming physically manifested to where you can literally see it with your physical eyes, not just your spiritual eyes. And that is something that we have to guard our hearts and minds against becoming overwhelmed by that.

But we also need to understand that we are called to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. You know what’s interesting about that particular last part of the verse? Take every thought, captive. I just have a personal testimony. I used to think along. Kind of go when that verse was preached on that or just even said, you see it on like mugs and you see it on bookmarks and you see it on memes. I used to think that that was talking about other people’s like. It used to be like thoughts, like memes that are out there. Take every thought captive into the obedience of Christ. And I also thought that this was like my own thoughts, like, if I have a bad thought, I need to take that thought captive under the obedience of Christ. Like take that thought and go, Okay, is this true? Is this what God’s word says? Mm hmm. That’s taking it captive under the obedience of Christ. But it’s also taking what other. What you think other people might be thinking of you captive. It’s also taking other thoughts, messages captive under the obedience of Christ. Is this pure? Is this noble? Is this true? Should we be watching this should be watching this show or this cartoon or even a song that you’re singing?

Yeah, absolutely. And the final thing on resilience and we’ll go into a few other things is wisdom. It is so important that we’re walking in wisdom as we go through this world. It doesn’t mean we don’t take action. Sometimes it means we take no action. Sometimes it means we take lots of action. And in between, it’s just that we have to discern what we’re to do. But usually any decision made in fear is a not a good decision. We’re only to fear God. And that good kind of fear. It’s a different meaning of the word actually is reverence for his authority in our lives. But that dread fear is not something we’re to participate in. Now. The reality is we’re all human. And there was a fall in some garden. And, you know, right in the beginning and because of that, we do fear, but we’re holding our thumbs captive. And right here, we’re walk in wisdom. In Ephesians 515, it says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil, therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is and do. And that’s as far as we’re going to go. But we have to understand what the will of the Lord is right. And when we’re operating in a fear based mindset, it’s really hard to hear the will of the Lord, because fear is the opposite of trust. Mm hmm. Trusting the Lord.

That’s true.

Right. So let’s dive into some marriage stuff, which is the first one is communication.

Yeah. So if you want to grow your marriage to be more resilient, one of the things that we were just talking about in depth is that the strongest marriages that we have actually witnessed, we’re really good at communication and the ones that were not were really bad at communication. I think that it’s probably one of the top things of all time that I would say, like if a marriage is going to be thriving, they’re going to have good communication skills. Right. And the same goes for being resilient. If you want to to be resilient during these times of transition, you’ve got to communicate in regards to great transition. What do you need to communicate about? You should communicate about expectations. I think that sitting down and having a date night where you like really lay things out and you you share your hearts, right? You prioritize, you communicate about these things and maybe even do some pros and cons lists to help you figure out what should be prioritized, more or less or whatnot. But then having a good talk about expectations, because you said something today when we were chit chatting, you said, yeah, husbands could potentially get overwhelmed.

Well, I think it’s really important, guys, that we lead this. It’s very important that we initiate. Men are women can initiate, too, of course. But I find my wife likes it when I initiate. Like she really is yearning for that. And if I don’t, she will initiate because well, we got to get to it. Like if if a man’s not going to initiate to have an important meeting and talk about important things, women by all means. But let’s be the ones that initiate these things and let’s create space away from the kids. Even if it’s a date night in or whatever it is, it doesn’t have to involve spending money. But we need space to communicate as married couples, and sometimes it’s fun and sometimes we’ve got to get down to it and talk about the hard things and talk about some goals around things that are not about, you know, a vacation or something like that. So we’ve got to prioritize, we’ve got to set expectations. And then sometimes there can be expectations that we don’t know about on each other that creates conflict. For example, if the spouse is expecting certain things that we’ve got to get all these things done.

I see this sometimes in like our parenting mentor program, for example, because even really good parents, intentional parents, they become aware of things that can be worked on that yields better fruit really fast because the Bible is so good and it’s woven in with biblical truth and the biblical truth on how to. In these times. And what happens is, is one of the spouses often wants to fix everything at once. Yeah. And it becomes really overwhelming actually for both of them. And so what we always advise is make a short list. So that’s the same here is when we’re talking about marriage tips for the great transition, what are the things we can do and what are the important things we do do? And then on the practical level and then on the marriage relationship, what is one thing you can do this week? Men to nurture your marriage, to improve the communication in your marriage. You know what, women? It’s a fact. They speak more words. Isn’t that a fact?

It’s like 30,000 words a day for women in 10,000 for men. So that’s average.

So I wonder if part of the marriage dilemma is that men already think they’ve heard a good enough number of words?

Well, yeah. And the reality is, is how much of our days are we actually spending communicating? There’s a difference between like talking and listening and really hearing one another and communicating where you have undistracted time. I will say that I think that when it comes to the things that we were talking about in the previous podcast on parenting during the Great Transition, we were talking about being aware of what’s going on in the world and not just sweeping it under the carpet and then finding yourself alarmed when things happen, right? But but being somewhat prepared, if you can, and encouraging people to communicate about this. This is why we’re doing this marriage podcast right now, because you need to talk about those hard topics. Yeah, you need to decide like, okay, so we have this much funds that we can actually a lot towards this. This is our max. We’re going to set a boundary here. This is how much these are the things that we can a lot to this and this or you know like you have to communicate is my point. You guys need to make lists. Isaac and I make lists all the time. We love dry erase boards, but we even just do it on paper and then we scratch them off as we get them done. You guys, it feels so good to go.

It does, you know?

Yeah. And we also, like, involve our kids in that process because we want them to be productive people when they grow up, even if it wasn’t a great transition. Isn’t that task of like writing things down, communicating together in marriage, what type of things you want to do together, write to be productive and then start moving towards that. And like teaching that to your kids is.

Huge, is huge.

It’s such a good life skill for them. It’s one that’s necessary for families to do together regardless of what is happening in the world. So now, because there’s some crazy things happening in the world, you take that that idea and you communicate and you work together as a team and you give and you take and you compromise and you collaborate. Right.

And I just want to say that, guys, even though we’ve heard a good number of words, we need to ask for more words, meaning we need to initiate and ask questions and, you know, dig in to more, deeper conversation. And and what’s amazing, what I noticed with my wife is when I initiate and I’m earnestly wanting to hear what she’s saying and I’m asking questions and we’re diving in, the nature of the communication becomes deeper, much faster. But I’m not initiating. She’s she she will dance around the deepness because maybe I’m just worn out and I don’t feel like doing it right then. But really, we need to we need to be proactive. We need to dive in and we need to create the space for that. So I would just I think we need to initiate more communication.

I think that’s good. Now, while at the same time, I would say that wives, one of the best ways you can love your husbands is to be aware to their outward physical symptoms of being exhausted and not overwhelming them with too much. There are times when I’ve made that mistake where I have gone, okay, I need this and this and this done, and I need to go do this and this, and I’ll just start going, right? And there are times where I can look at eyes. I can go, Oh, too much. I think I went too far. We can just stick to today, not tomorrow. In the next day. The next day.

Yeah. Because here I was working on 25 things on my list all day.

Yeah.

And then I get off and then there’s. A whole different kind of list.

Right. Yeah. And so when you guys, if you want a resilient marriage, you have to be able to communicate about your lists. Like it’s helpful for me to, to go if I’m going to share these things with Isaac. Right. And I see maybe exhaustion on him. Let’s just say there’s an emotion of exhaustion or something to not just assume that the worst, which would be, oh, he doesn’t want to hear it. I think a lot of wives take that, but instead ask questions and go, Do you have a hard day today? That’s something that I could get better at. And and to hear them and for them to just kind of briefly catch you up on what they did for that day, then you can have more grace and maybe you won’t pile so many things on them, actually.

And here’s a tip. Even if you’ve had a hard day, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear the other person’s hard day. Right? Right. We should both want to hear and reflect and encourage one another. That’s good communication and I think that’s important. So one of the most important things that should be on your list is community.

I know we’re talking about marriage, which marriage is to people. Right. But I’ll be honest with you guys, when it comes to having a resilient marriage, who you have around you makes a huge difference. Yeah, it either helps your marriage to be stronger or it can actually make your marriage harder. Right? You want to be surrounded by people that are going to make you a better wife, not a worse wife. You want to be men. You want to be around other men that are going to make you a better husband, not a worse husband, and pull you away to do things you don’t want to do.

Hey, guys.

Video games or.

Don’t. Spend lots of time with other men that are constantly trying to escape from their families.

No big red flag.

No escapism allowed. You want to spend time with people who can’t wait to get back to their families, but are making a sacrifice or creating some special space for guys to hang out. That’s cool.

You need friendships.

Absolutely. But it shouldn’t be. I can’t wait to get away kind of feeling in any even the joking. Just be careful B be wise about the joking because there’s a little bit of truth in joking sometimes and you just want to be thinking about is are the men I’m spending time with, you know, really making me more godly? Are they who are pointing me to Christ? Are they making me want to spend more time with my family?

Tiny seeds of discontentment in your marriage and family life. Like I would imagine that this happens at ladies night out sometimes. I mean, it hasn’t happened to me for years and years and years, but I wrote about it about ten years ago. There there have been times where I’ve gone to ladies night out, where there’s been women that they sit and they complain about their husbands, not for the purpose of getting encouragement and advice, but just for the sheer. It’s like it makes them feel better to just get it off their chest. And there’s like commiserating that then starts happening and it’s contagious in a wrong kind of way. It’s infectious, and that kind of environment is not healthy. That’s not going to make you a better wife. Same thing goes for men. It’s not going to make you a better husband. You need to be around people who are going to encourage you to be a biblical spouse, period.

Never rip on your spouse and when they’re in front of you and when they’re nowhere near you.

And here’s another tip you need to be really, really careful about the friends that you have. If they are not speaking highly of your spouse, that’s a big thing. That’s something that we’ve learned over the years. If they do not have a grace giving biblical perspective on your spouse and their they talk bad about your spouse to you, boundaries need to come up. And that goes for families too. Like if you have people in your family who don’t like one of your spouses and they just talk bad about him or her, like, I’m sorry. No, there will be no division in the marriage. None. None. It’s kind of like we talk about that with parenting, right? You don’t let your kids become come between you and create division.

You know, throughout the Bible, many places it talks about be of one mind, be like minded. We are to run with people, especially these days. You need to. It doesn’t mean we aren’t friendly and evangelistic and meeting new people. Absolutely. Great commission minded. Absolutely. But you do need your core. You actually are running the race with your kids need that. They need strong other strong families that you’re connected to. They need to witness that happening because it can be very easy. Just out of this yourself, do you have a lot of friends? Okay. Some of you are saying yes, some of you are saying no and might be feeling a little bit sad, but. What? How we define friend might change how you just answered that to yourself too. And it’s not about knowing lots of people. It’s not about going to a place where everybody knows your name. Right? It’s more about who am I running with in a way that we actually really know each other, not just the Instagram goodness, but the realities of what’s happening.

So, you know, when we talk about community, a lot of times people think that we’re talking about church and that is part of your community. But your community goes larger than that as well. But and we’ll get to that in just a second. But envision yourself walking into a church and maybe you look around and you recognize 50 people, maybe you recognize 20 people, maybe you recognize 100 people. But do you do life with any of those people? And what I mean by that is when you’re sick, is anybody offering to bring you a meal at all? Do you know when someone doesn’t show up to church and then check in on them? And if they’re sick, do you take them a meal? Like like do you know that’s knowing what’s going on in people’s lives and taking a moment to actually care for them?

Hey, brother, I can tell something’s wrong. What’s going on or. Hey, sister, what’s going on? You know, just knowing each other well enough to be able to even see the cues.

See the countenance on somebody’s face and go, Hmm. I wonder if they if the enemy was attacking them on their way to church this morning. I just want to encourage.

You know, that some of your friends are praying for you. Are you praying for some of your brothers and sisters.

Or is there I mean, some people just don’t have that kind of friendship or that connection. This is what God calls us to. This is what we’re describing. It should be common because it’s what God thinks of as normal. Right? But it’s not either in today’s society. First Corinthians Chapter 12 talks about spiritual gifts. You can guys can go over there and read it. But verse 26 says, if one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. So do you know when a member of your church is in a season of suffering of any kind. Of any kind in want of anything?

Mm hmm.

Is there a need of any kind? And if so, do you know them? Do you feel that? Because it says if one member suffers. All suffer together. Mm hmm. We should be carrying one another’s burdens in that regard. Right. And when you’re actually walking in community with people in such a way, when things like what’s going on in the great transition happen, the body of Christ actually functions like it’s supposed to. Right. And then we go back to the first thing we said, you can’t do everything, but you can do something right. It’s exactly the same as mean when when God is teaching about spiritual gifts. Right? And, and they’re dispersed evenly amongst the body for the edification of the whole, which is also first Corinthians. Chapter 12 is one of the chapters that talks about that when you recognize that in relation to spiritual gifts, and then you also think about the practicality of everyday life and how like the spiritual gifts are not meant to be used only in the church meeting time. It’s when you’re part of the body like you don’t just go, Oh, you lost your husband. My heart breaks for you today, during this time when I see you at church, and then I forget about it on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, and then I I’m reminded again on Sunday. No, if you truly are suffering as that person suffering, you’re going to walk in their life in a way where you’re going to potentially text them every day if it’s something as serious as having lost a spouse. Right. Like we need to really evaluate. We use this word audit all the time, but we need to evaluate. We need to audit our relationships. And if we actually would know when there’s something severe happening in our neighbors lives, in our church communities, life, in our greater communities life. And we need to take responsibility for that because the depth of it is our responsibility.

It’s so important. We’re going to give tips on building good community in just a second as we finish this podcast, but we want to take a moment, just share. It’s been so fun to be in the Be Courageous app with so many of you. It is growing every single day. I think a dozen people signed up today, for example. It is a premium app, meaning you have to pay for it, but that’s because we have to pay for it and we’re putting a lot of energy there and money with the kids podcast and everything. There’s a lot of production that goes into that and just the effort and so forth, the technology facet and keeping it going, all of that stuff. So it’s no advertising and that’s how other social media is free is because they’re advertising. You are the product. In this case there is a valuable product and that’s so people pay for it. So that’s been going really well. Be courageous in your app store. Also courageous parenting com all show notes and everything. Free resources. You got to check out the the parenting workshop that’s free but also the parenting mentor program home schooling blueprint post Christian postpartum course redeeming childbirth and the shop. So please check it all out and we so appreciate it. Well, let’s give some tips here on how to build that community.

You know, we’ve talked about building biblical community in previous podcasts as well. And so we’re not going to go super, super in-depth on this. You can go listen to those other podcasts as well for more teaching on that. But really the two, I would say main ways that you build deep relationships is through hospitality, which I talk a lot about hospitality and serving. When you do something to serve other people together with other people, you bond in a way that really is unique to serving together. And I think that that’s a really beautiful thing. I even just think back to the fond memories I have of doing missions trips back when I was a teenager and how transformational. A lot of those relationships with older people that were in the church that I grew up in were very influential in my life as a young Christian. And it really those relationships would not have been built if it wasn’t for us serving together. And then of course, hospitality, like let’s just be real honest. Do people get honest in large groups sometimes if they’re super brave and ultra confident, but usually not. And so real discipleship, real honesty, real getting deeper happens when you’re in a safe place, which the safest place is in your home. Right? Like and when I say safe place, I mean, like in a place that’s confidential, in a place where they feel loved, they feel at home, they feel like they have ears that are undistracted, listening to them absolutely serving.

So key search, guys, we need to go do stuff together and help and so forth. We should not only do things together like we should be able to sit and talk and chat too, and coffee and all that stuff. But the hospitality thing, I think sometimes husbands, some husbands and I was one of them are the they harm hospitality. And what I mean by that is they just want to relax. They just feel like it’s busy and there’s a lot going on and we don’t want to do too much hospitality. But you know what? Make that a regular rhythm, encourage that. Don’t be a burden to your wife’s efforts to do that. Now, in some marriages, it’s flipped. Mm hmm. I understand that. And obviously, Angie is a little more extroverted than I am. I would go more on the introversion scale. All those. Those are generic labels. But I think it’s really important that we see the need for our families to have deep relationship and we pursue that on a regular basis. So let’s not be a detriment to relationship building in our families.

And I would say, you know, I’ve taught on hospitality a lot over the years, but one of the big, big tips would be don’t allow things that are non eternal to prevent you from doing hospitality. One example of that would be to have such a high expectation that your house needs to be perfect in order to have people over. Let me tell you, we host Home Church on Sundays and not every aspect of our home is perfect every Sunday. It’s far from it. And that’s something that I’ve had to let go of, or we would never get anything else done and it would be a very stressful event leading up to it. And so in order to really experience the blessing of what hospitality can be, you kind of have to adapt your expectations of yourself, especially when you have little kids in the home so that I can share more. But I hope that you hear my heart on this and not not prevent deep friendships from happening because of a fear of what other people are going to think.

Absolutely. So there are some tips. And the final thing is financial. Just make sure you’re talking about financial things. Sometimes there can be silent expectations or pressure on the husband, for example. And when in life, when marriages communicate about the realities, even if they’re not good of financial things, it is such a peace giving thing. It is so good. It relieves pressure when both the husband and wife are both in the know about whatever the things are and they can pray about them together. They can communicate about them together. Husbands, let’s not keep secrets about financial challenge that can be a big detriment to marriage stuff.

I would say too, like on the communication level about finances, it’s something that, you know, when you’re talking about goals and lists and like the things that you want to do regarding like the great transition and being married like you have, absolutely it’s vital that you are communicating about the finances regarding how much those things are going to cost and that that becomes part of your decision making process because not everyone can do everything, like we said, right?

Absolutely.

And then the last thing that we just want to encourage you guys with at the end of this is to care for each other’s hearts and needs. I think that a resilient marriage is not one that is always going, going, going hardcore all the time. Yes. Like and like a team of oxen. I think that you have to take time to enjoy one another. I know that Isaac and I need it. We have our times where we have to, like, recalibrate just us together. We have to relax and chill. And it’s something like taking time to rest. God needed a Sabbath, and he took time to rest. And we need to do that as well. And we need to remind our spouses during these times that we have to honor God and we have to honor that commandment to take time to rest. But we also need to rest together and enjoy one another’s company, because at the end of the day, like, you can be super productive. But do you love one another? Are you loving to one another?

One of the things we’re considering right now, because this is something a real challenge for us, actually, one of the things we’re considering is maybe we’ll go speak at a church or do something in conjunction with some rest time. Maybe that is a way we could get away, have a little sabbatical and have it and have it be funded while serving somewhere. So we’re starting to think about maybe being open to that, but it definitely has to be worth it to be to arrange everything in our house and so forth. But anyways, that’s something that we need to remind ourselves of.

Right, exactly. And so just as and honestly, this could be like a whole podcast on its own, but we, we had to put it in there with you guys because a resilient marriage that brings glory to God is one where people look at your marriage and they look at how you look at one another and they see the love, they see the commitment, they see the delighting in one another or the the pride, if you will. And I don’t mean it in like an arrogant kind of pride, but I mean, like, I’m so proud of you or good job kind of way. Like when you look at one another that way and you support one another that way through these hard times, how much more is God glorified because. That is what people like. They look at that and they go, Whoa, I want a marriage like that. And then they go to you and they can ask you, like, how did you get to that? How how can you be married 23 years and still, like laugh together and delight in one another? And that’s your opportunity to just point your finger straight to Jesus Christ. Hey, it’s.

More important than ever that we are united as married couples, that we glorify God, that people see your marriage, and despite circumstances, they see you loving one another. And most importantly, your kids are seeing it, even though things are changing and things might be uncertain and there’s weird circumstances in the world, it doesn’t mean we should fear it all. In fact, we should be excited about how we can make a difference for the glory of God through our family, through our relationships. But it doesn’t mean we sit idle. We need to have wisdom, and it’s okay to take some actions so your family thrives so you can better share the gospel and glorify the father through your family.

That’s right. So thanks so much for joining us. As we were talking about a resilient marriage in great transition times. Right. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Please share on social media. You can find us that courageous parenting, courageous mom and resolute man. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom. For free online workshops, blog posts and best selling 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 encouragement straight to your phone.

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