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Full Transcript:

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

Isaac & Angie
Hey, so great to have you both on the podcast.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Gosh, it’s good to see you guys. Hello to you and everyone listening.

Isaac & Angie
We have Erin and Jennifer Smith, longtime friends, but also have just a compelling, helpful ministry on marriage. We’re so glad to have you here. So yeah, you guys, when we were talking about your book a few months ago, when you were sharing that with us, we were like, Oh, we should have them on again.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Although I really want to just be in your guys’s living room with you. We were just talking about we should come visit. We need to come out. Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
Yes, we want that too, actually. Yeah. Yes, you got to come visit, bring the bring the crew. Miss your kids too. So what we’ve spent some good times together in life and in journey and so forth. In fact, we appreciate you guys just encouraging us to start a podcast even. And really, you’ve been just such good friends. And but I think everybody here listening is going to be delighted by this because

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
them.

Isaac & Angie
God has really touched your marriage in a way to help so many other marriages. I mean, just the amount of marriages that are helped by the ministry, you guys do marriage after God, is just amazing. So we’re really excited to talk with you about it. So maybe a good starting question for those who maybe don’t know much about your life is to kind of share. I know it’s kind of a lot. You guys have been married 16 years, right?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith

Yep. Yeah, almost 17.

Isaac & Angie
And a lot happens in that amount of time. And there have been, that’s right, and seasons, right? But I thought that maybe to give you guys an opportunity to kind of share, like, where did your marriage start out? Did you start out praying strong together in like unity? Or you want to share your story?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
It’s a lot of years.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, so Erin and I, I feel like we both grew up having a foundation of prayer from people in our life closest to us. And for me, I would say my mom, you know, from time to time would encourage us kids to pray, but really it was my aunt. My aunt would be the one where we’d be driving and see a car accident. She’s like, everybody, we got to pray for this person and pray for the ambulance and pray for all these people.

And so she gave us the room as kids to like learn how to pray. And I really appreciate that. And I think that just established in me this desire to want to be close to God. And as I got older, it was just maturing in the faith of knowing how vital prayer is to the Christian faith. And so, and Aaron, do you want to show your? Yeah, and I had a

Similarly, but my parents both being first generation Christians, my dad prayed with us every night before bed. My mom prayed with us all the time. If anything ever happened, it was like, let’s pray. If I was scared at night, let’s pray. If school was hard, let’s pray. And so I kind of, I thought that was a normal thing, was, you know, prayer was a normal thing. And I, you know, as we’ve been growing up, going through marriage and talking to lots of couples over the years and getting comments and messages.

it’s more common that people don’t pray or they don’t know how to pray out loud or they’re afraid to or feel uncomfortable. So it was something natural for me when we were dating, I would pray with you and you would pray with me every night before we like left to go home. Or even if we were talking to each other on the phone, we’d pray before we hung up. And yeah, or hey, this thing’s going on in my life. And I’d be like, let me pray for you. Or you’d pray for me. So we were praying with each other right away. And in ministry and all of these things, even before we were married,

prayer was just, it was what we did. It was always what we did. Now I do want to include that my hang up with prayer happened after I got married. So I thought I had this ideal, you know, perfect image of marriage and that it was going to be perfect and all these things were going to be wonderful and beautiful in our relationship. And things weren’t that- And we deserved it because we did all the right things and we waited and everything’s God owes us this. Okay, yes. So I’ve been refined a lot over the years, but.

Isaac & Angie
Of course.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
in that, you know, those first handful of years, my faith was really rocked because I did have these expectations of marriage. And when those things were not happening, I was frustrated and I was angry and I was hurt. And I just felt like I don’t wanna keep going to God for these things because nothing’s changing, nothing’s happening. And I don’t know if it was burnout or just an emotional like cold shoulder I was giving God.

But that was a really hard moment for me when it came to just my personal prayer life. And I remember nights with, because we would, our queue for praying together was at night before we went to bed. And there were nights that I did not want to pray. And I remember Aaron praying over us still. And it was such a huge encouragement to me because I was stubborn, I didn’t want to in the moment say thank you to him for doing it, but I am so grateful that.

you were able to spiritually stand in the gap for us and remain faithful in prayer, even though it didn’t happen every single night. And I know you had your own frustrations in that time period, but it really held us together and it really gave us a lot of hope in those times of darkness. It was, prayer was really one of the only things that I, cause nothing made sense. Like everyone’s wondering what was going on in the first four and a half years of our marriage, but we had issues sexually and we had a lot of pain and things weren’t working the way we expected them to work. And then on top of that, all of the normal,

frustrations of newlywed life and learning how to live with each other and having different perspectives and different opinions and different ideas about how things should work. Finances. Everything’s just. Building a home. Compounding. Prayer. I didn’t have any answers outside of like, okay, God, I have no idea how to fix this. I have no idea what that. So I’m just going to keep coming here and hopefully you listen. Hopefully you are going to work. Hopefully you’ll change my wife. Hopefully you’ll change me. And so I was eventually getting.

to a point of like, well, this, you just don’t seem to be listening to me and getting just as frustrated. It took me longer. I feel like I held on a little bit longer, but it was at that moment of that, almost ready to like let go and be like, I can’t, this isn’t working. It doesn’t seem like you’re listening is when God spoke to me, when God answered. And he’s like, well, he’s like, are you ready to listen now? And I’m like, oh.

Isaac & Angie
And what did he say? What did God tell you? What’s the message?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Prayer was, yeah, go ahead. Well, that was when he, you know, he, he addressed my heart on a very deep level of not just very similar to what he said to Paul when he’s like, I’m not going to take, you know, I’m not going to address your prayer to get removed this thorn. I’m just going to tell you that my grace is enough. And so he kind of did that. He didn’t address the thing that I’ve been praying for, for years. He addressed my view of my wife. He addressed my, my

view of marriage, he addressed my view of him. And I was like, dang, okay. And so his challenge to me was like, are you gonna hold against your wife things that I don’t even hold against you? Are you going to love her as Christ loves the church? Regardless of circumstances change. Even if I never answered your other prayers. Are you gonna do the thing that I’ve already called you to? Are you gonna trust me? Are you gonna follow me in these things? And it wasn’t until I surrendered to that, that we started to see answers to other things. So.

It was a pretty powerful thing, but if we weren’t praying, if I was just silent before God and kind of just going through the motions and just playing Christian quote unquote, I don’t, we wouldn’t have made it at all. God, I wouldn’t have been able to hear God, you know, call me out on those things. And so it’s why we’ve ever since we’ve started this ministry, which started pretty much right after that scenario with me and God and us kind of coming out of that hard season and being beginning to be healed and transformed. And.

God calling us out on these things and us repenting was the birth of this ministry. And prayer was a central part of that from the very beginning. Sending out daily marriage prayers for the last 12 years, and then it’s turned into books.

Isaac & Angie
It’s so great. Prayer is so powerful. Well, and I remember when I first met Eugene and we were meeting because we found each other in a, what was it? We were blogging on somebody’s book launch team or something. We found each other. That’s right. They were huge. Well, they brought our friendship together, right?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah. Blogs were a thing once. They were huge. Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Well, and we had just moved to Central Oregon at the same time. And I was like, I think, yeah, who reached out to who? I don’t remember at the time. I don’t remember either. But we met.

Isaac & Angie
I think we met to talk about redeeming childbirth. You were pregnant with all of them, you didn’t know it. So I remember that. Yeah, Elliot was in the stroller with her outside, strictly organic. But it was a long time ago. And I, but I remember when we were just getting to know each other and, you know, looking at the things that we both were doing and seeing so much like, my goodness, one of the things.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Okay, I was pregnant. Yes, that’s right.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
That was a long time ago.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yep. Was that like, eight or nine years ago, huh? Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
that I love the most was that you were constantly posting prayers on your Facebook page. And it was like every day. And I remember at one point being like, how does she have time to be putting a post up every single day? Like, you know, it was just like, but I was like, but it’s a prayer. It’s a prayer like that. How sweet like when you’re a busy mom and like all you have in you to if you do one thing, what is that one thing you’re going to do? And that you are putting out prayers.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
That like showed me the true heart of your ministry. Well, I love to cause prayer. It’s a posture of humility and it’s, it’s sharing something with your spouse, but you’re sharing it to God and your spouse is right there. So what a beautiful way to share your heart when sometimes it can be uncomfortable to share your heart in communication. God pulls out of us our hearts in front of our spouse.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Isaac & Angie
And that can be so healing and just an incredible thing. So I love that too, because it’s also a posture of surrendering to God’s will instead of our will. And so many marriages get stuck because they’re both operating in their own strength. And this is just a beautiful expression of, wow, bringing God into your daily marriage. And that is so powerful. Yes.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, I think what you just said about giving them kind of like a peek into your heart when they’re praying to God and you get to sit there and just kind of listen in. I think that’s been such a beautiful part of our relationship is being able to hear one another’s hearts, the things that we’re going through, the things that we care to pray about and our perspectives about it and just that plea to God of either change me or change the circumstance or whatever needs to happen, God, like I’m all yours and I want your will to be done.

I think that’s been a really cool way to get to know each other. Yeah. And we’ve also, we’ve discovered that the reason a lot of couples don’t pray together out loud, they may have their own prayer life or maybe they don’t, but often there, there’s a trepidation, there’s a fear of that level of intimacy. Other intimacy is a lot easier than that level of what you just talked about. And so there’s this, this fear of like, well, if I open my mouth, first of all, I’m going to stumble. Like I’m going to.

I don’t know if I’m going to say the right things. I don’t know if I’m going to sound silly or dumb. And then the second part of that is like what we truly talk to God about. Are we ready to reveal that in front of our spouse? And the reason we wrote the marriage gift, this book was to make it an easy stepping stone, an easy way to create a pattern and to break through those barriers of fear, to get to a level of intimacy with your spouse that you probably have never experienced before. Because

Praying with your spouse is one of the most intimate things you can do. Truly talking to God when you go before God and enter into his throne room and you do that with your spouse and you bring up, like you said, Isaac, those things that are in your heart that maybe you haven’t brought up before or never have brought up out loud. It just kind of exists there, either confessions or fears or doubts or insecurities and even things that you’re thankful for.

But sometimes it’s hard to say things that you’re thankful for about your spouse. And then when you say it to God, it’s like, you’re thankful for that about me? Wow. And we desire to see marriages, if marriages can recognize this and get past that, break that ice. Like, they’re like, oh, okay, it is scary. I want this. What?

Isaac & Angie
Yes. And sometimes Aaron, you said something. Yeah. Oh, you broke up a little bit. Sorry about that.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Oh, just get past that fear and realize like, well, this level of intimacy is so much better. Their marriage will grow closer to each other. They’ll grow closer to God and they’ll definitely start seeing God move and speak and transform and change.

Isaac & Angie
I have a question for you, Aaron. You know, guys listening in, husbands, you know, we’re supposed to be men, masculine men, you know, leading our families. And sometimes I think that the humility side of praying with your wife can expose weaknesses. This might be a fear of men, might expose some weaknesses, or if I let my wife know what I’m insecure about, if it’s provision or if it’s-

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
something I’m struggling with or these kinds of things, is that leading well? And so I just think people have that question, so I wanted to get your take on that.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, we’ve kind of discussed this a few times in the past, this idea that I think there’s two main issues why men might have a hard time praying. They love God, they probably pray silently, they probably pray at church. But I think what you said nailed a good point is that humility level or that humility that we have to step into shows weakness because that’s exactly what that is. It’s…

I guess, as God said, he’s like, my strength is made perfect in your weakness. You have to reveal that. But we haven’t been taught very well as men, not in the way the current society is saying, hey, let’s celebrate the weaknesses. Like, oh, we could be frail, we could be weak, we could be this. But a strength of, I’m gonna shine light on those weaknesses for the sake of becoming stronger, becoming a better leader, becoming a… Those are two different…

versions of humility. There’s one that wants to celebrate the weaknesses and there’s one that wants to say, I’m going to shine a light on it because I don’t want those weaknesses. Um, and so if, if men can recognize that it’s, we don’t bring, we don’t bring to light these things to just say, oh, that’s who I am. And I’m just going to bring it up so that you can all like live with it. And I’m going to, and that’s, I’m going to keep it, but I want to bring it up. Cause I, you know, as James says, if we confess our sins to one another to be healed, we don’t confess it to just make them known.

and be like, well, that’s who I am. It’s for the purpose of healing, for the purpose of strengthening, and the purpose of maturity, which is one of the most masculine things you can do, is not just recognize the weaknesses that you have, but figure out how to utilize them or change them, and say, okay, I have this weakness, I’m gonna seek God specifically for growth in this area, and I’m gonna allow my wife to walk with me in that, and to encourage me in that. And from a wise perspective, I think…

I could see how it would be hard to share that insecurity or weakness, wanting growth in a certain area for you to expose that. But from a wife’s point of view, if you did that, I feel encouraged to know that you’re aware of those weaknesses and to want to come alongside you and encourage you in them, especially if I do see growth in those areas. It’s like my eyes are open to it. Builds trust, right? Yeah. Because then you trust that I’m not hiding. I’m not protecting.

Isaac & Angie
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
pretending that those don’t exist when you probably clearly see them already, right? Because that’s, our spouses see our weaknesses very clearly. But when we reveal them, it makes for a much safer zone of like, oh, he’s sharing what’s true for the sake of changing that truth, for the sake of growing in that area. Maturity.

Isaac & Angie
I noticed when I’m vulnerable with Angie, something recently happened where I was really vulnerable with her. And all of a sudden there was like a breakthrough in her understanding of me. It was kind of amazing. It was like, she just became really soft towards me. And I’m like, wow, I gotta be more vulnerable with her more often. This is really great. She’s like, oh, she’s touching me. And just like. But.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
But there’s a huge truth to what you’re both talking about, which is, you know, two become one flesh, right, in the Bible, but are you really one if you’re not vulnerable with each other? And are we creating barriers to limit opportunities that God wants us to be a stronger unit, a stronger team, so that he can be glorified in much deeper, magnified ways to the community, to your children, and all these things. I mean, it’s such a…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
You’re not know it.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
There literally could be walls that could be broken down in marriages if they just showed that humility towards one another and were grew in comfortability of sharing the real things on their hearts. And prayer is probably the safest way to do that because we have the protection of God. We’re talking to God. It’s awesome.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, that’s true. It’s so cool. I think the other thing that I’ve experienced in my own life, things that I’ve considered, I’m like, oh, this is, why am I having a hard time with these types of things? I think over the last handful of generations, there’s been a mentality shift on certain things that are spiritual, certain things that are, should be just marks of a believer, like a believer prays. We talk to the God we believe in, but it…

almost has a perception of it’s feminized. It’s like, oh, that’s a praying out loud and worshiping like that and doing these sorts of things. And that sort of ministry is very, that’s what women do. Not what men do. Men need to be quiet. Men need to be held in. And you’re not supposed to let go of anything. And you don’t reveal yourself. Use that word vulnerable. And men are probably cringing, like vulnerable. You want me to be like, vulnerable? You know, quote unquote society has shifted this idea of like, no.

Or I don’t know if it’s been men or I don’t know who did it, but certain things that should be marks of a believer, things that we do because it’s what Christians do. Oh, I don’t do that because that feels too much like not who I am. You’re like, well, no. Actually talking to God, if you read the Bible, all of the men, like even Paul is like, I wish that the men would pray with their hands lifted high without anger. It’s a masculine thing.

to fearlessly go before God. It says that we do it boldly. And to not think it’s something that’s outside of my ability or character, but it’s actually something that my character needs to be conformed to. That I know that I need God, that I cannot do this on my own. And that’s much more strong than someone who acts as if they can do it on their own and tries to do it on their own. And we’re gonna always fail in that, either by…

Isaac & Angie
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
overpowering and being rude or angry or using our physical or in that none of those things are going to be godly. The Bible teaches all about how we can be as godly men. And so I just want to encourage the listeners and even myself because I have to be reminded of this that being a spiritual person talking to God, coming to Him, being vulnerable with my wife are not feminine traits. That’s just those are things that are spiritual traits.

because we trust in someone bigger than us and outside of us.

Isaac & Angie
Well, I’ll go ahead. Well, I was just, I was thinking about where would this have this trend of femininity or, you know, yes, exactly. And you know, one of the things that I’ve noticed at churches recently is that they’re always promoting women’s prayer meetings, women’s prayer meetings.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
I think it’s perceived.

Isaac & Angie
And it hit me a few times because I was like, well, why aren’t the men needing to pray too? Like, wasn’t it just a prayer meeting? Why is it a woman’s prayer meeting that we have a slide for in the slideshow? And it was multiple different churches that were all putting these women’s prayer meetings. It is. It’s a standard thing. And so I think that you really hit on something here that needs to be there. There’s really a need for a revival in the churches that it’s like, no, the women are not the only ones that need to pray. We need to have all believers praying.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Pretty standard, yeah.

Isaac & Angie
Men, women, children, all ages. It does, there’s no qualification to be able to talk to God. Jesus came and fixed that, you know? Exactly. I just wanna encourage my brothers out there too that it’s not about how long the prayer is. It’s about praying. And if somebody’s of less words naturally, they might be of less words in their prayers and it doesn’t make it any…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah. Amen.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the qualification was Christ, right?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Isaac & Angie
different in quality of a prayer. And so sometimes I think that it can be discouraging to men sometimes because women, a lot of them, have a lot more words and that can come out in an eloquent prayer that’s beautiful. I mean, Angie’s fantastic at praying. So, you know, but I learned early on that, no, God made us differently. My prayers can be short and powerful and hers can be long and powerful. And that’s great.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
It’s true.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith (22:07.398)
Yeah, I do think that we can get caught up in the comparison in that insecurity place. So, you know, they do it better than me or I can’t follow that one up, you know, but I love what you’re saying because we need to be encouraging people all the time that there’s different giftings out there. Some people do have a special way with words and that’s a good thing and that’s okay. But it doesn’t devalue anyone’s small prayer. And I always think of children. We think about our children’s prayers.

Isaac & Angie (22:08.018)
Nothing to do.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
And they’re so humbling and they’re beautiful. And you know, Edie, she’s three and she’ll ask to pray, you know, and she’ll looks around the room and she thanks God for everything she sees. And it’s very random. And at the end of it, we affirm her and we say, that was beautiful, Edie. Good job. You know, and it’s like, they, they are simple and they are faithful. And it’s just as important as someone else coming along and sharing something that was very eloquent.

Yeah, I think what you just said, the psychological ramifications of like, like God just made women differently and they do have more words. They are able to communicate better, especially in things of intimacy. I think that they have emotions that they can tap into much quicker than men can. But the reality is, and Jesus spoke on this, like it’s spoken of over and over again in the Bible, this idea that it’s not about the quantity of words.

or the specific words used, it’s about the heart of the one praying. The posture. And it’s so much so that we’re told that when we don’t know what to pray, that the Spirit prays for us. And so there should be freedom in coming to God. Not a fear of, I mean, we should have fear of God and reverence of God, but not a fear of like, well, am I going to trip up in my words? God’s like, are you coming to me? Is your heart with me? Are you for me? And…

There’s been so many times that my prayers are just huffs. They’re just breaths, like, and I’m sitting there quiet and I have no, none words, zero words. Yeah, zero words come out of my mouth, but I can feel me praying to God. I could just feel my heart wanting to receive from God. And like you said, there could be a, like your wife is just beautiful with her words and God’s still looking at her heart because

Someone can have all of the right words, someone can have the most poetic prayer and God be like, no, like what you just did was hypocritical and I’m not receiving that because he wants us to pray with humility, with like humble hearts, with sincerity to him that we come to him not with a mask on, not fake, not trying to coerce him into anything, not trying to manipulate him or anyone

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
honest, sincere prayer, which like you said, Isaac, it could be a few words and God knows already what we need, it says. And so I just pray everyone listening that they would get out of any perceptions they have of like what it means to talk to God and that they would just talk to God, regardless of what they think, how they think other people do it, how they think, how other people might think they should do it, he.

Isaac & Angie
Sorry.

Isaac & Angie
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
and that they would just recognize that he wants to hear from us. He wants to listen, he wants to talk to us too.

Isaac & Angie
So true. So true, so true. Hang on real quick.

Hang on a second.

Isaac & Angie
I think the kids didn’t know we were going to podcast. We’ll cut this part. Yeah. He was helping. He brought daddy’s coat in, it’s soaked. Yes, it’s raining outside. Very nice. Oh my God. Ethan’s like, oh, I didn’t know. Yeah, it’s okay. We’ll cut it, but let me start back here with the question. So, you know, this is so true about prayer and a lot of times.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
That’s okay.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Oh, so cute. That’s so cute. What?

Isaac & Angie

I think there’s blockages of people praying because of their own relationship with God and maybe some secret sin or something that they’re keeping a secret from their spouse or something just blocking their relationship with God. God’s always there, he’s right there with them, but they somehow have something that’s limiting them from even having that kind of relationship with God where they feel comfortable just praying out loud to their God. And so what do you guys?

Think about that in terms of marriage.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Well, I think that we’re advocates of transparency and sharing. I started my ministry under the term unveiled wife and just this idea that what I was learning in marriage was that when I share my heart with my husband and with God, there was this cool corresponding emotional understanding connection that I was growing in understanding the importance of.

those things and it made me feel so much closer to Erin when I was actually truthful and honest, even though it is scary to share, you know, things that you have in your heart that you don’t want anyone to know or you think like, well, if I tell them this, how are they going to respond? And for someone- Are they going to use it against me? But for your spouse to be able to sit with you in that and love you still, that is true love. And that’s a transforming feeling and experience. And it-

Change is a marriage. It’s really powerful. And you experience that with God too, when you can go to him and offer your heart to him. Cause you know, some people will say like, he’s the all knowing. He already knows why do I need to go to him in prayer? Which I was there before. But what I experienced is there’s a difference between him knowing me and me offering myself up to him to know me, to be known. And I don’t know. I just, I would encourage also cause there’s probably a lot of marriages where either the husband or the wife’s listening or both.

And they will get that negative response if they’re doing what we say. Maybe if they say, hey, would you pray with me? And they’re gonna be like, no way, right? And that’s gonna be rejection and no one likes rejection. Or they’re gonna reveal an area of their heart that they’re afraid to reveal and their spouse is gonna not respond well to it. Maybe to be honest, they probably won’t even know how to respond well to it. It’ll just be just out of their nature they’re gonna respond. But that leads to this idea that

We aren’t doing this because we know the outcome of our spouse. We’re not doing this because we can control the response that we get. We trust God. And so we can do things out of obedience, regardless of the response. You know, think about the martyrs preaching the gospel and then being killed for it. Like they didn’t get the response they were hoping for. They got the opposite, but that was a part of the deal.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
And so in our marriages, we can trust God. And it might even start there before even going to your spouse. First, just go into a place of, okay, Lord, show me how to be bold and brave. Show me how to open up these parts of my heart that I’ve never revealed to my spouse before and help me to do it with you and for you first. And then would you prepare my spouse? Would you help them navigate how to walk with me in this? Would you?

Isaac & Angie
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
And I would imagine this goes for sin. This goes for past hurts. This goes for emotional brokenness that has never been addressed or revealed. There’s an infinite number of situations that this could be causing these kinds of fears, but doing it in a form of the purpose is…

is healing before God, it’s closer relationship with God, it’s growing in your faith with God, and you’re trusting that God is going to deal with your spouse. You’re trusting that he’s going to lead them and guide them and however long that takes. And so I, yeah.

Isaac & Angie
So good. I mean, we’re living in unprecedented times. I mean, everybody understands this. We’re seeing things happen before our eyes. It’s kind of fascinating and exciting to see some potential biblical prophecy coming about and so forth and being around in these times. But one of the things, and then you have some people doing some light prepping, maybe some food storage, and you have people doing lots of it and in between and these kinds of things. And that’s not what I’m getting to. But I think more important than that is marriage prepping.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm.

Isaac & Angie
and making sure our marriage is strong so that when we go in these harder roads down the road, whether they’re inflicted upon our marriage, upon our family, might have nothing to do with our relationship, but we’re more resilient. We’re stronger. And I think that if people have been on the sidelines with praying in their marriage, with nurturing their marriage, with growing stronger as a marriage, they need to invest. They need to do that promptly because things aren’t gonna get easier in society.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
together.

Isaac & Angie
But third, we have a good God and he, you know, we have the Bible and it tells us, you know, generally how things are gonna happen. And so we can see these signs and these things, but you know what gives great confidence? Trust in the Lord. What also gives great confidence is when your marriage is strong and when your teamwork is incredible. And through your team, no matter what happens, if you’ve got God and your marriage is strong, a united team and there’s no secrets and you’re praying together and you’re growing together and you’re…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
each growing in your relationship with God. That is such an amazing confidence. We can walk through these fascinating times in for the glory of God and how attractive is that gonna be? People are gonna be like, whoa. Look at that.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
What are you doing? Yeah. How are you doing that? When you were talking, the word united stood out to me. I was thinking right before you said that unity, it’s unity. And we need more unifying activities as couples. I feel like so often we have kind of individualized our lives as far as like- Ministry of the Year, Ministry of the Year. Yeah, we go to work, we do this, we do that. And you can almost find yourself on autopilot in a sense of like just the pace of today’s world. And-

I think that marriages need something that will help unify them so that they can do exactly what you’re talking about. And prayer is a perfect way to feel unified in your marriage. Even if the thing that you’re praying about leaves you feeling a little disjointed, that’s why you’re bringing it to God. The fact that you’re doing it and praying about it is unifying and it’s bringing your oneness before God. And so I think that’s important. Isaac, I’ll take what you were just saying one step further. Not only having a strong relationship with the Lord.

also in your marriage, that family unit being like the focus, the starting point, doesn’t just make going through these things easier, because it does, but it actually becomes a really powerful weapon for the Kingdom of God. It tells us that we have an enemy that is against us. We have the powers of this dark age.

That’s what we’re battling against and we’re not battling in marriage. You’re definitely not battling it alone and you shouldn’t be and there’s a lot of marriages that are that they’re battling on their own and they’re not unified and they’re not together and how hard is that to battle against this external enemy? While you’re battling your internal enemy that doesn’t make anything easier and you are not effective. So I’ve often said in the past that if the devil can’t take your salvation, he’s definitely take your effectiveness. And so

Are you being effective as a couple for anything in life? Raising good children, just that minimum. Is that one of them or having a good example to your neighbors? Those are very small tools, but those are very powerful ones, let alone going and actually using your life and your resources and your time and your energy and your work as a form of spreading and growing the kingdom of heaven.

Isaac & Angie
Amen. It’s interesting as we’ve been talking, one of the things that we get a lot of messages you guys probably do too, from people who are in broken relationships, they’re trying to rebuild trust, they’re trying to be patient with a spouse, they’re trying to be kind to a spouse. I mean, mind blow, right? They literally think through and…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, sometimes just kindness. Sometimes it’s so hard.

Isaac & Angie
As I was thinking of this question and this topic, I’m thinking of 1 Corinthians 13, love is patient, love is kind, it is not rude, it does not boast, it’s not self-seeking, right? And then you think about prayer and what prayer does to help you love your spouse. You know, I also think of that scripture that says, live with your wives in an understanding way, let your prayers be heard. It’s like that doesn’t go just to the men. Like, I take that as a warning too, like…

I need to be living with my husband in an understanding way. And just as Isaac gave that example recently of being vulnerable with me and us being able to come together and how softer I got in my presence towards him, it was easier to love, be patient, be kind, be gentle, be self-controlled, to not be self-seeking, to not be rude. It was easy to be compassionate, to be kind, to be caring, to want to ask more questions. It was… Your nature…

literally changes in you when your spouse is honest and vulnerable with you. And so how can a person live with a spouse in an understanding way if they don’t have any communication, if they don’t have any understanding of what’s going on inside them? And if a person is having a hard time communicating in the first place, prayer…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
There’s no knowledge.

Isaac & Angie
out like out loud in front of your spouse where you’re communicating God, maybe it’s easier to say it to God because you’ve already said it to God, but your wife hears and then it’s easier for her to live with you in an understanding way or vice versa, husband to wife, right? And so I just even think of how many people are out there saying, it’s hard for me to be patient with my spouse. It’s hard for me to be, you know what I mean?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, the scripture that Jesus gives us when he’s talking about how like the plank eye, it’s so powerful, right? And it’s easy to like talk about it. Like, oh yeah, like take the plank out of your own eye and then you can see clearly in your brother’s eye, right? But most of marriage, when you’re not walking in the Spirit, when you’re walking in the flesh is only ever looking at the speck in each other’s eyes. And so there’s something really defusing, disarming.

Isaac & Angie
Oh yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
I should say, to true and simple confession and repentance. And what that means is, so if I have a moment where I’m irritable, because it happens, I’m frustrated, I had whatever happened today, or to be honest, sometimes I have no reason for it, I just am, and it’s not good, right? Because my flesh. And stopping in the midst of lashing out, I’m like, why did you do that? And…

So I’m like, hey, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m a little irritable right now, but I shouldn’t have done that. You don’t deserve that. I’m going to go take a moment and recalibrate. Just please don’t hold on to what I just did. That was not intended. Something like that is so disarming. And if there’s a pattern of that, even when like there’s probably a spouse right now, that’s like, well, my husband’s always this or my wife’s always this. If you as an example,

Practice the very thing that you wish your spouse would do, the whole golden rule, do unto others. So if you have a hard time being patient, when you’re impatient, recognizing it in the moment, be like, I’m so sorry. I was very impatient with you. You don’t deserve that. Please forgive me. I will work on that. That goes so far. It goes so much farther than you trying to tell the other person how they should change. The moment you recognize that so, but that comes back to prayer.

on the individual level of, okay, Lord, having a self-awareness, a spiritual awareness of, like, God, show me how I can influence this marriage. Show me how I can be an example to my spouse. And I think people would see some amazing fruit from that.

Isaac & Angie
And if you know, on that note of how I can change also, right? Like one of the things that we’ve been talking a lot about to, to wise on how they can encourage their husbands to lead. Because that’s one of the other very common questions that we get on a regular basis. And one of the things that we, that Isaac and I talked about is.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Mm-hmm.

Isaac & Angie
You know, a lot of times you can go through the most basic list of, Oh, have you tried this? Have you tried this? And they can go, I do it all. I do. I do all those things. It’s not working. And then I go, well, so if, if all of these things you’ve tried and, and it’s not working, then change you. Because what’s the worst thing that could happen is nothing changes. What’s the worst thing? Right. And, but the truth is this is like.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
I’m like, okay.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Hmm. No, Angie, that’s not the answer. Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
People will oftentimes pray for their spouse to change, right? And I’m not saying that it’s bad. Like say, worst case, I think, you know, someone has an addiction for somebody, you’re gonna, you’re aware of it. You’re gonna pray for them to not be in bondage and addiction, right? So I’m not saying don’t pray for that. But sometimes the most valuable prayer is, Lord, show me how I can change to help them better. And…

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Cool it. Yeah.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith

Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
And to just love them more because sometimes the addictions, the sins, the different things, the struggles, the emotions, the irritableness, whatever it is, sometimes it’s because it’s triggered too, right? By a spouse. And so, exactly. Yeah. Yes. And so you have to break the pattern, right? And what’s the best way, like for a couple that’s maybe listening right now and they haven’t prayed together out loud. Maybe.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Well, there’s a pattern that happens. And then it’s like back and forth. Back and forth, yeah.

Isaac & Angie
And I’m not talking about like praying at the dinner table with the kids. I’m not talking about praying with the kids at bedtime and you’re both there together and you’re praying. I’m talking about in the bedroom, by yourselves, or on the date night, in the car, outside on a walk. You’re just praying together. Like if you’ve never done that before, maybe even when there isn’t an issue. Just because you’re praying.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
you want to connect with God together because there’s like a sweetness there in marriage. That literally can be the weapon that breaks bondages. It can be the thing that encourages and builds up your marriage in a way where, I mean, we battle not against flesh and blood, right? But against the principalities in high places. And there’s definitely an enemy wanting to attack marriage. I mean,

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Amen.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah.

Isaac & Angie
The fact that we’re just getting the influx of so many marriages struggling right now, we’re just like, whoa, there is an attack on marriage. And so what’s the best armor that marriages can do first and foremost is to pray.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah. And I think that when we, what I’ve experienced is when, when we pray, it, uh, opens our spiritual eyes to see and look for that thing that we’re praying for, that thing that we’re hoping for, where before maybe we’ve thought about it, but we’re not really like paying attention as clearly and as closely. But when you go to God and you’re, you’re praying and petitioning for something, you’re looking for it, which I think is really important. And uh,

Well, and it actually makes a huge difference. There’s so much psychology because God knows how he made us. Like our brains work the way they work because God designed them. Now things can dismantle and damage them. But in general, like we all love affirmation. We all are being encouraged. We all love being pointed out when the good when you do the good things. And we hate when you when the bad things are pointed out. It’s just natural. Right. And like what you’re saying, if I’m praying for my wife,

in a certain way for how she is toward me, like in approaching me. And my heart is truly for her to grow in that area. My heart is truly to see God work in that area. And I’m probably to be more prone to recognize it when she does little things, even if it’s not exactly what I was hoping for. I’ll be like, wow, you that’s not normal. And you and you went out of your way to do that. That’s so awesome. And I’m also going to be more prone to thank her for it, encourage her in it.

And then psychologically and physically, we actually start changing to be more like that thing. So not only do you pray for it and God’s moving in His Holy Spirit, but also we start to see it with our eyes open and we start to encourage those things. That’s why the Bible tells us to encourage each other all the more as the day draws near. Like every day we’re to encourage each other when we see whatever is good and whatever is noble, whatever is of good report, whatever is praiseworthy, that we think on those things. That’s what prayer does.

Isaac & Angie
Yes.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
It aligns, we have a line in the beginning of our book, it says, we don’t pray to bend God to our will. We pray to align our hearts with his. And that’s what we’re doing is we’re aligning our hearts, our eyes, like you said, we start to see when God is working in moving.

Isaac & Angie
and

Isaac & Angie
Amen. Well, with that being said, everybody needs to take the prayer challenge. I don’t know if you call it that or not, but this is a great book right here. Marriage Prayer Challenge and the Marriage Gift. And so can you just share a little bit about where they can get this and what’s going on?

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
That’s a great challenge.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
The easiest place that they can go to is themarriagegift.com and can read all the information that they want or order the book right there. Yeah, and if they want, we’ve been doing an eight part series on prayer, specifically going through the Lord’s Prayer on our podcast, which is also called Marriage After God. And so you can find it anywhere you subscribe to podcasts. But we’ve been digging into a lot of things we’ve been talking about today based off of how Jesus taught us to pray. So those are the two places, our podcast, Marriage After God, and themarriagegift.com to get the book.

Isaac & Angie
Well, it’s definitely worthy. These are amazing people. So everybody check it out and so good to have you on the podcast And to see you guys we miss you We need your double date again, yeah, so we get double dates in my memories

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
Yeah, we miss you guys a lot. I know, I miss you too. We will.

Aaron & Jennifer Smith
I love it. You guys are so easy to talk to. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, we greatly appreciate it.

Isaac & Angie
Oh, absolutely, absolutely.