Finding Joy In Every Season – Interview with Bobbie Cox

Welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. Today’s episode, I am having an awesome conversation with Bobby Cox. She, the reason I’m wearing my Choose Joy shirt from Walk and Love is because she’s probably one of the joyful people I’ve ever met. You’ll get this from our conversation, but she’s twice widowed and at the age of 69 years old has been called by God to start a ministry, to disciple people. And she does this in a very unique way and it’s actually something that I think is very clever and useful, especially in your marriage and especially with your children teaching about the gifts of the fruit of the Holy Spirit and patterns of prayer. And so enjoy this conversation I have with Bobby Cox. She’s the founder of Branch to Hope and I think you’re going to really enjoy her. Hey, I’m Erin.

And I’m Jennifer

And we’re the host of the Marriage After God podcast. Our desire is to help you cultivate a marriage that chases boldly after God’s will for your life together.

We want to invite you to subscribe to our show wherever you watch or listen.

We are so glad you’re here and we pray that our discussion truly blesses you and your marriage.

Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast.

Hey, Ms. Bobby Cox. Thank you so much for being on the Marriage After God podcast.

Thank you so much, Erin. I want to first of all thank you because allowing an our time slot really blesses my soul because so many of these, these are 20 minutes and 30 minutes, I feel like I need to hurry up and get everything in and we’re always running out of time. So I appreciate the relaxed environment. I’ve really been looking forward to this.

Oh, good. I can’t do every episode I’ve done so far. We’re always pushing that 60 minutes or even longer, so I don’t even know how I’d do it shorter.

Well, I appreciate that.

I don’t know if you notice I’m wearing a bright colored shirt because you like bright colors.

I do,

I do. So this is from a company called Choose Not Choose Joy from a company called Walk in Love and it says Choose joy. And the reason I wore this is because you’re probably one of the joy joyfulness, is that a word? Joy-filled people I’ve ever met.

Oh, you’re so kind to say that. Well, I’m going to comment. So you are wearing a yellow shirt, which for us at Branch to Hope, that’s Yellow Day, which means kindness, and yesterday was blue day, which means joy. So we’ll get into the explanation of that, but I appreciate you doing that. Today happens to be Green Day, so it means a day of peace.

Next time we do an episode, let me know what day it is. I’m going to put that color on.

Well, if you go to Branch to hope.app, it’ll tell you the color every day. There

You go. Perfect. Well, Bobby, why don’t we start with you just introducing yourself for my audience, who are you, and also just a little bit of your background story because it’ll add context, everything we’re going to talk about today.

I would love to do that. I appreciate you so much, Aaron. I had no idea when I turned 65 years old that the Lord would rebrand me. I am a widow twice and I had wonderful marriages, but now I am just blessing, feel so blessed that the Lord allows me to feel content and fulfilled with him being my husband. Now he is my companion, my best friend, my counselor. And so I appreciate this season of my life. I am now 69 years old and the last four years has been quite a roller coaster for me and oftentimes I’m hanging off the limb with my fingertips saying, okay, Lord, what are we up to here? But I have learned to let God be God, get out of the way and it’s amazing the things that he will do. My life all began rebranding During the pandemic I was hosting home church and unfortunately like so many, we drank the Kool-Aid and thought, well, I guess we’re not supposed to meet.

(05:04)
And so one day I was reading second Corinthians one 11 and it says, hear us and pray for us. And all of a sudden I looked down at my watch and it was one 11 and the Lord inspired me to start sending a text out to my home church to pause and pray every day at one 11 for which I did. I always, my message now is let’s please listen to the details of our moments and don’t disregard them because had I disregarded that very moment, you will see what the Lord would not have been able to do through my life. So I continued texting every day and organically it grew because people in my home church kept inviting people to be in the text. And over time, the Lord started putting me in a trance and writing a message. He said, choose a scripture the day that’s based on the date so that every time someone sees the date throughout the day, they say, how can I engrave that scripture into my heart and weave it into my conversation?

(06:08)
And then he started writing a message about that, and that was four and a half years ago diligently and devotedly and sometimes up until four o’clock in the morning I’ve written those messages. I call myself Jesus ghost writer because believe me, I wasn’t even a good English student. So I am far from being an author. But since that one 11 moment and we’ll get into more details, I’ll just share with you what the Lord has done. He has developed our app which has become a discipleship tool according to many people. They say, we always try and share the word of the Lord to the lost and bring them into a knowledge of Jesus and they accept Jesus in their heart and then what do we do with them? Oftentimes we say, go read your Bible, pray and act like a Christian. And so what our app does, and believe me, not by my design, all by God’s design because it’s been quite a journey to get this app where it is now, we offer a notification every day at one 11 to pause and pray. So that’s where you learn how to pray every day. We also have a prayer wall and an answered prayer, very simplistic on our app. Then secondly, where do you start reading the Bible? Well, you can start one scripture today on our app and it gives you an explanation about the scripture. So that’s how you start reading the Bible. How do you act like a Christian? You take the nine fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5 22 and 23, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,

Self control,

And every time that you see the color of the day, which we’ve aligned to each one of the characters of Jesus, you just think throughout the day, how can I live more like Jesus and weave that into my lifestyle? They say it takes 21 days to make a habit, 21 times nine through the spirit is 189 days. So in less than six months, if everyone would just take the idle moments of their time, I mean we all have time sitting at a red light standing in line at the grocery store waiting for an elevator to say, okay, could I have been a little bit more kind? It happens to be yellow day or it’s a good time to try to groove that into the neurons of our lives. So that’s how you live like a Christian. So that explains what the app is about. Then secondly, we now have a Pause and Pray devotional book, which contains 365 days of our writings based on the days of the scripture, and it also has QR codes. So were the first interactive devotional book on each page you can look at and it read the scripture for you and it reminds you of the color of the day and it grooves that into your mindset. So when you’re out throughout the day, you look for that color and you’re reminded how to live the character of Jesus. So had I not done anything with that one 11 moment, none of this would be,

I was just interviewing another couple just before we got on with you and the theme that kept popping up in that conversation, just like what you’re stating now is the Holy Spirit was presenting something to you, presenting, prompting your heart,

And

Like you said, if you would’ve ignored it, if you would’ve ignored what he was pointing out to you, you would’ve missed something that God had for you and not just for you, but all the people that were going to be blessed by what you’ve been creating and working on. And I love that you point out that this is discipleship. It’s a part of discipleship because a big part of discipleship is being with other believers of course,

But

Being a Christian is learning to walk in the fruits of the spirit, learning to trust the Holy Spirit and listen to him like you were just talking about prayer and then the word of God most importantly, which is what the Holy Spirit uses to transform our lives to be more like Jesus. Absolutely. I just love that. How far after, I don’t want to spend too much time on the loss of your husband, but was the one 11 branch to hope, was this all coming out fairly close to the loss of your second husband or was it much later?

No, it was much later. I lost my first husband in 1999 and then I said I was never going to marry again. I was 44 years old and five years later the Lord had something different in mind, and so I married a second time and he was diagnosed with cancer within a year of our marriage, so we chased treatments for cancer all over the world. I’ve traveled 700,000 miles looking for alternative treatments for cancer and actually started an organization, helped hundreds of people from that after he passed away in 2014. This all began in 2020. 2020,

Okay, so six years,

But I traveled all over the world up until that time and I had just finally said, Lord, I don’t think I can get on another airplane or check in another hotel, and so he landed me here in this sweet little wonderful place that he’s chosen for me in the city of Grapevine, and he and I just live here in what I call a sanctuary because it’s really his ministry pulpit for me.

I want to tap into something that we talked about when we first met a couple of weeks ago.

Yes.

You said, Jesus is my husband

And

There’s probably some widows that are on our show, don’t listen to our podcast, and this could speak to them, but also just this understanding because whether we see him as our husband or have that level of relationship like you do, I want you to talk about what you said about the dinner table and the yes. Yeah. Can you share that?

Absolutely. Well, being a widow the second time, it comes with a lot of more like, oh goodness, Lord, how can I get through it this time? Again,

(12:21)
You know what I started doing? Aaron was setting the table every night for Jesus and myself. I actually never, ever would eat without a husband or someone with me. You always had something. If we were apart, I just wouldn’t eat. So that was a real challenge for me is to sit down at a dinner table alone. So I always had a place for him at my table. I also would put my, always make sure that my passenger seat was empty in my car. I would put my Bible there as a visual that Jesus is riding with me in the car. I began realizing that prayer is just chitchatting all day. For instance, if you and I were going to share the day together and go to lunch, we’re never really going to stop talking together. There’s not a

Lot. Yeah, it’s flowing

Five moments, right,

(13:17)
And so that’s what I began doing with Jesus. I would just be talking to him driving down the road or at the dinner table just about the day, just as if my husband was there. And so I just grew into a relationship that was just so fulfilling to me because hey, he knows the future. He wants the best for me, so who better could I be sharing my deep dark secrets that he knows anyway and asking him how to navigate my life? I began allowing him to be my master scheduler and in every detail of my life because nothing is not important to God. I mean, we often say, well, I don’t need to pray about that. We need to pray about everything, which is just like, okay, Lord, today, what do you think would reach someone on a particular color or outfit that I might wear today?

(14:09)
I mean, there’s nothing too insignificant because I feel this way. Again, back to listening to that one 11 moment, I’ve said this for many years when I was teaching some Bible studies, I said, if you’re driving out of your driveway and all of a sudden you think, oh, I meant to grab that piece of mail to take to the post office, and you say, oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. No, do it because that will make a difference in what happens in the moments of the day. If you listen to those little voices, small words or quiet words that the Lord says there’s impact because it’s those very moments of intersecting lives that he knows, but we don’t.

Oh, yeah, amen. Like I was saying, that the mentality of recognizing that Christ is there with you as a husband, okay, so I am here with my wife in our conversations, in our bedroom, in the car, if I’m realizing like, Hey, the Lord’s with me, yes, he sees how I’m treating her, he sees how we are engaging with each other. He sees how we’re treating the children and walking with our neighbor and what we’re doing, and it adds a level of reality because that is the reality. It says that the Lord’s with us,

It’s

And that he’ll never leave us nor forsake us. And so I think sometimes we forget

(15:28)
That he’s with us, he’s there and his eyes are on us and not in a judgmental way. I mean the Holy Spirit might judge us in certain scenarios the way we’re acting, but he’s there as our friend, as our savior, as our God to walk with us. And I just love that reminder. I mean, you started seeing that in a very real way after you lost your second husband and God was using that as a deep comfort to you, but it’s something that we need to recognize is true also for us. And so I just, I love that story you shared.

Well, Aaron, and what I feel like even more, and this is what I learned during that period of time, is we have to be intentional about our moments. I mean, we so often just are haphazardly say things, do things, don’t even give it a second thought.

That intention.

Yes, but intentionality, and that goes along with our color of the day challenge, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in the near future, but I would literally carry a olive wooden cross that I got from Israel around along with some little pictures that I had of Jesus around with me. In fact, I still do that today just as a visual reminder that he is with me. Mean even, and I think this was in one of our messages just a day or so ago in our one 11 messages, is that we have to understand that he’s still there when we mess up. He’s still got that outstretched hand saying, Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. I ask you to cast your care on me. Don’t beat yourself up. Learn from what you just did. But no, I’m here to just shower you with anointing of forgiveness and let’s go move on. Too many people live in the past and I’ve learned that too many people marinate in their past or continually think about my to-do list and what’s in the future, and that interferes with what God wants to do in our life today,

And the enemy is going to use that condemnation that we feel, which is not from God. The Bible tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, and so we feel guilt

From

Sin and then the devil uses that and says, oh, God is condemning you.

Absolutely.

And Jesus is like, no, I forgave that sin also

In class. That’s

Right. And you are not enslaved to that sin any longer because of me and the Holy Spirit. So that’s a good

Point for us to remember. Just to add that Erin, it’s like the thing that floods in afterwards, and this is where I think that Satan is trying to get us to is we feel unworthy and so therefore we think, oh, I can’t be in the presence of the Lord because I’ve messed up. I’ve done something and I feel condemned. But no, that is the biggest lie from the pit of hell. And so I think that when we realize that one of the biggest sins that is when we don’t forgive ourselves and forget just like Jesus has done, we’re just nailing him to the cross again

And we can’t be doing that can’t be trampling on the cross. Absolutely. I think it’s Romans or Hebrews. Anyways, the other thing I was thinking about is you were talking about going before God and feeling unworthy. The only thing that even allows us to stand before God with any sort of, because unrighteousness cannot be before God.

We’re

Standing there with Christ. He is what God sees in us,

(19:11)
Not us otherwise, we can’t go before God. There is no relationship. There is no reconciliation of what he did, his righteousness, his work. That’s what commends us to the Father, and so we can go before him. You’re talking about prayer, so let’s talk more about prayer because my wife and I, we love prayer. We have a ministry of prayer. We wrote a book about it just like you guys have a 365 prayer. We just did a 365 prayers for our marriage book called The Marriage Gift, and so why don’t we dig into some prayer and we can get into these your colors soon, but talk about how prayer has played such a huge role in your life, and it sounds like because you had such an emphasis on just talking with God and having a conversation with Jesus that you were able to see that moment at one 11. So why don’t you tell us about that?

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Hey, Merry Dr. God. Friends, thank you for your continued faithfulness in listening each and every week. Jennifer and I have often shared with you about how important prayer is in the life of a believer. It’s so important in fact that we’re told this in one Thessalonians, rejoice, always pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you. It is God’s will for us to pray and we want to inspire you to begin praying for your spouse and marriage every day. This world hates marriage and so does our enemy because he knows the power that your marriage is meant to have in this world. He knows that if you and your spouse are praying and chasing boldly after God together, that the impact Christ will have in and through you will be powerful. So we need to be praying more than ever before.

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Our heart is to encourage you along with everyone who listens to this show, to be praying for your spouses and your marriages to be strengthened, renewed, healed, prepared, and empowered to do the ministry that God has for you to do in this world together. So Jennifer and I would love to invite you to join the thousands of other couples in taking our 31 day marriage prayer challenge. This is a completely free and fun way to build a habit of prayer in your marriage. All you have to do to join is visit marriage prayer challenge.com and fill out the registration form. Once you do that, you’ll begin to receive an email every day from us during the 31 days to not only remind you to pray for your spouse, but we’ll also give you various topics and prompts to help you know what to pray for. We dare your marriage to start praying like never before. Start the challenge today@marriageprayerchallenge.com.

You know what? I’ve learned so much that God hears. I mean so often I feel like we pray with hope prayers and I consider those having a safety net. Well, what if God doesn’t answer that prayer? I need to kind of have a little safety net going on there, but when we pray, bold expectant prayers

(22:57)
And put them in God’s hand and expect them not to be what we desire, but to be what God desires for us. When we can align our desires with God’s desires, there’s never a disappointment or a safety net needed in our prayers because we only want God’s will to happen. I pray differently now because sometimes people will say, oh, pray for this and pray for that and pray for this. Well, I do blanket that prayer because I know the power of prayer, but at the same times I say, but if God doesn’t have it in his plan for you to have that job, we don’t want that job because that means he’s got something better

(23:41)
In store. So what has become of that is I have a really go-to prayer warrior. So my mornings are filled with prayers coming in, and I’ll tell you what I have learned to do and I would inspire your audience to give this a shot. My prayer alarm goes off eight times a again, 10, 10, 11, 11, 12, 12 obviously at one, one for a long time at 2 22, 3 33, 4 44, 5 55. There’s not a 6, 6, 6. And if there was, we wouldn’t be using that anyway, so eight’s funny, eight times a day, my prayer alarm goes off and I choose certain people that have reached out for prayer to send them prayer hands on that particular moment and say, Hey, I just want you to know I’m praying for you. When I started doing that, the power of prayer of that intentional prayer together, people are coming to say, I have been praying for this for years, or I can’t believe this happened.

(24:47)
That intentional two or more gathered prayer on a continual devoted diligent time period makes a difference. In fact, what we are considering doing is we’ve launched this pause and pray book, which I showed you, is to launch a series of books called Pause and Pray at one 11, pause and pray at 2 22, pause and pray at 3 33. We will designate a felt need during those particular moments. For instance, for people that are depressed at 3 33, that language of our book would be written in a particular vernacular that would reach those people that are depressed. Say 4 44 is for people that are lonely, 5 55 for people that are sick. And those would not only be gifts that we could give people or people could buy for themselves when they’re suffering from those felt needs, but it would also groove into someone’s mind that at 3 33, I have a lot of people that are depressed that I know of. I’m just going to pause every day at 3 33, we pray for everybody that’s depressed. It really would transform things. So we are looking forward to that series coming out, hopefully that that would really make an impact because what I’m understanding is grooves into our minds is I have a lot of people that contact me and say, Bobby, I was riding down the road looking for a house number and it was one, one or made me think odometer just said 1, 1, 1, and it wasn’t 1, 1, 1, but I just paused and prayed.

(26:27)
So there is some validity of what that does when we intentionally do things every day.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of this, and I might even be saying it wrong, but there’s this thing called the badder meinhof effect. Have you ever noticed you buy a new car and then all of a sudden you notice that car

Everywhere? Yes. Yes.

And that’s kind of what this is. It’s like when you’ve opened your eyes to something, so the 1, 1, 1,

Yes.

And then all of a sudden you’re seeing it all the time, and so you’ve created a trigger

To

Pray you created, and I think that’s a great strategy, and for all my listeners, this is something that you could try if you’ve been wanting to pray more, if you’ve been wanting to have a more intentional prayer life, this is a great idea. Setting an alarm every day,

We

Set alarms for a lot of things. We set alarm, we have to go to the gym. You set alarm for when your kids have to go to piano. We have alarms for a lot of things, and why not an alarm to pray? And it’s exactly how the Jews of old, they had specific times and they would use times of the day be like, oh, we pray in the morning, we pray in the evening, we pray at this time. And that’s what’s wrong with us using the same strategies, hacking our brains and saying, we’re going to teach our brain a pattern.

And

That’s what I love about what you’re doing is you’re actually finding very tangible ways for people to grow in these spiritual disciplines, which is something that many believers need help in. We need to mature in these areas. I mean, I’ve struggled at times to be consistent in many different things. Not that any of those things commend me to the father, but it’s my relationship grows with him. So this is really good. I love the one, one, the 2, 2, 2, the 3, 2, 3.

Good.

That’s really cool. I never thought about that. There is no 6, 6, 6 on the clock. Praise God for that.

Amen.

Yeah. So prayer is important. Prayer, it’s a big deal. But that kind of also led into like you talked about the discipleship and then you went into, I want to talk about the colors. I want to just give you some free rein because I actually thought this was a really beautiful thing and parents that are listening to this podcast, I want you to consider checking outer app because this is a great tool for teaching our kids about the gifts or the fruits of the spirit. So I’m going to release you, Bobby, go talk about this.

Okay. Well, again, listening to the moments of our time, this was an inspiration two decades ago. I was at the University of Ohio at a speaking conference during the weekend, and the Lord just oftentimes tells me to go unscripted and I do, and he amazes me at what he speaks through my mouth. But what he did, that particular event, he aligned a color with each of the nine fruits of the spirit, as I said before, found in Galatians 5 22 through 23, and I told them to you before. And so I spoke about that and I was speaking to advertising people and college students and professors, and throughout the weekend as we were mingling at different mealtimes, I would be amazed that certain suit and collared tie kind of guys would come up and say, okay, I saw purple and I’m trying to be more faithful. And so it was working. So throughout the decades I thought, what am I going to do with this Lord? It was powerful at that particular weekend, but I don’t know what to do with it. So I toyed around with it from time to time and I had an artist draw some books that would be a coffee table book.

(30:14)
Nothing was really tracking until that one 11 moment. And after a while that our app began developing, he said, okay, Bobby, this is the time that we are going to debut the color of the day and the fruits of the spirit. So I began putting them on the app and every day that our one 11 message would come, we would say, Hey, today is joy day, so it’s blue day.

(30:41)
Every time you see blue, just think about how I can be more joyful. And so we started doing that and every nine days it repeats. And so as I said before, they say it takes 21 days to make a habit. If we could just be intentional about doing that in the idle moments of our days, then before long we would groove those colors and those characters of Jesus into our minds. I’ll give you an example. I have a 21-year-old friend and her name is Lola. And Lola actually, and she doesn’t mind me telling you this, but two years ago she swallowed 300 pills. She didn’t want to be in this world anymore, and she has just blossomed into someone beautiful. And in fact, I met with her just day before yesterday and she said that she wears the bracelets every day, which we now have. I guess I’m jumping a little bit ahead because we now have a bracelet every day that tells you the color of the day. Tomorrow I will have on a pink one that says patience, and the next day I will have on a yellow one that says kindness. So when we want to pause every day and think, oh, I feel like I want to say a rude comment, but uhoh, it’s peaceful day, how can I turn that into something that would be more peaceful?

Bobby, can I ask you, what is the name of your app

Branch to Hope?

It’s

At the app store and the Android store.

I’m going to download it right now and I wanted everyone to hear it. It’s called Branch to Hope.

It’s Branch TO Hope.

Is it all one word? I’m trying to find it.

No, it’s three

Words, branch to Hope. So I’m going to download this. I just love this. I’m sorry, continue on talking about the colored braces because it’s such a great idea.

Yes. What Lola said, she wears a different every day and she said, miss Bobby, I was driving down the road the other day and it happened to be Green Day, so I’m looking at all the green grass and the green trees and I’m thinking, how can I be more peaceful? She became a server at a five star restaurant and she was having some challenges with her coworkers and then she says, but all of a sudden I saw an orange sign, a caution sign, and I thought, well, just because it’s peace day and green day, I can still have self-control. That’s orange day. And then she says, I’m driving more and more, and I thought I saw someone wearing a yellow shirt. And I thought, well, just because it’s green day and peace day, it’s also I can put yellow into my lifestyle characters today and think, how could I be more kind? So she says, what you’re doing is grooving into the neurons of your mind, these colors. So now she says, I know the colors when I see a color, and it’s not necessarily the day I think, how can I just weave that into the conversation of my life?

It’s reminding of the fruits of the spirit.

It is

What are the characteristics of Christ?

That’s right. And I’ll tell you if you, people are starting to really be entertained by this and it’s really an accountability, and you were speaking about your homeschool parents. I have a wonderful friend in Florida and he’s a big marketing guy, and when I was sharing the color of the Day challenge with him, and that’s what we call it, to wear the bracelets every day and take on the challenge to weave the characters of Jesus into your lifestyle for six months, he says, my wife homeschools my three children. I’m taking this color of the day challenge back to her. And she said, he calls me the next day and he says, Bobby, my kids are so hard to get up every morning. The next morning after we introduce them, they’re up there saying, dad, let’s go to the closet. What color of the day is it? Let’s wear it. I got my bracelet on and what character of Jesus are we going to live today? And he says, this is just changed our family dynamics. Literally, it’s hard to continue being angry in a situation when people are kind and joyful and peaceful. It is starting to change the relationships in families. And Lord knows after the covid and the shut in lifestyle we had and all the volatile tempers that have just really become a habit, we need to change our habits and our slogan is new habits create change. And when we can transfer all of that hostility into one of the characters of Jesus every day, I can assure you your lifestyle, the people around you, your coworkers, your families will all change. It is an infectious thing.

Do you have any more stories about how the colors have affected other? You mentioned a guy taking it back to his family and his kids. Tell me some more about the effects you’re seeing of people focusing on the fruits of the spirit and what’s coming out of that.

Yes. I have a very dear friend named Drew. He turned 80 years old last month, and Drew is a very high end financial advisor. And I’ll just tell you that personality because that’s what tickles me most about what he does every day. Every single day since he was introduced to the color of the day, he sends me a snapshot of him in the color of the day. And sometimes he says, I didn’t have that particular shirt today. So he’ll put his foot up on his desk and take a color of his sock because his sock, he loves theme socks, so he’ll have a color of his sock. And then the funny part of it is he said one day he says, I went to the University of North Texas and he’s on the board there and their color is green. And he says, but today is orange day.

(36:43)
And so the only shirt I actually had was a University of Texas Longhorn shirt on orange, and he says, I feel like a traitor, but I had to wear the color orange today. But his wife visited with me not long ago and she says, Bobby, this is working. She said, we just were on an airplane going to California. And she says, drew usually gets very irritated with something that I saw happen with a flight attendant, and he was so kind, he was just so joy to her. And she says, and he’s even being nicer to me every day, so it doesn’t matter. This is ageless and it goes across barriers of languages. This works, and it’s really entertaining to see the feedback of what you are going to receive when you start it. And it’s immediate. People are telling me, my husband was so angry with me, but she says, when I, instead of bouncing back the moment of being angry, she says, you know what? I was just kind and it just diffused the whole thing. And it really is setting people back. When I first began this, like I told you decades ago, one of the examples I gave was if you have a coworker that’s just kind of a thorn in your side, that negative person every day,

(38:08)
And you typically just throw a negative comment back and forth, and that’s just the rally you have. I called it bouncing back moments in the beginning I said, just try bouncing a kindness ball back to him and a gentle ball back to him. And I can assure you one day he’s going to start bouncing one of those balls back to you. So it really does work. I’ve seen it firsthand,

And there is something really incredible and supernatural about walking in the fruits of the spirit because it’s like light in darkness is exactly what it is. So everyone else is walking in, not everyone, but people who are not walking in the spirit of God, who don’t know Jesus walking in darkness. And so they’re going to respond out of that flesh just naturally.

Yes.

And when you respond in the spirit, it’s like, that’s not what I was expecting to come out of you. I was expecting something else.

Exactly.

It’s the same with forgiveness. It’s like when someone forgives, it’s so unnatural, it’s supernatural. It’s like, wait, what are you forgiving me?

You’ll find people pausing in those types of situations and it kind of sets ’em back, sets ’em back, and they think, okay, there must be something here. I kind of like that. I’d like to know a little bit more about it. It truly does open up the doors. It is a witness tool, and I say oftentimes, in fact, someone said to me, Bobby, I could sell this color of the day challenge to an agnostic because who doesn’t want people to be more kind and gentle and faithful and joyful and before long they’re living the characters of Jesus and say they don’t even believe in Jesus. So our goal is to get these on arms all over the country, particularly in the college campuses, the homeschool or groups and in the retirement centers. Just think of what the buzz could be about that because particularly on our college campuses, with all that’s going on right now, Aaron, the believers are really challenged right now. You can’t necessarily Bible thump because it just turns everyone so off. But when you live the character of Jesus, as you just said, it attracts people and they say, how can you be so kind when someone was angry? Or how can you be so peaceful when you have just gone through this experience?

(40:36)
And it really does open up the opportunity for people to ask about how we do that, and we just tell them about the fruit of the spirit that we’re just living a little bit more like Jesus every day.

Well, and I can see this being super valuable for husbands and wives, even not just teaching our kids about the fruits of the spirit, but there’s so many moments in the day where there could be contention or misunderstanding or difficulty and being just having those visual cues and those physical cues like you’re wearing a wristband to help be a barrier between you and your spouse before you do the whole bounce back thing trying to respond in the flesh. You’re like, wait, I’m going to respond differently. I’m being reminded to respond differently.

I reacted to a story just about that just this week. I had a mom reach out to me. She has three adult children living in their home and a 14-year-old that she homeschools, and she’s a wonderful mother. And she reached out to me and she says, Bobby, I just feel like everything I say to my children, it irritates them and they respond to me in an angry way. And she says, I just don’t understand it. And I said, you know what? I said, it’s just a habit. They probably don’t even realize that they’re responding because we become very habitual about just being irritated with people, especially when we live together. So I said, and I said, you were just recently delivered a bracelet set for each of your family members and a book for each of your family members. So my suggestion is why don’t you sit down with your family and say, I’m feeling like everything that I say irritates you, and I would like to know how to correct that.

(42:26)
I said, what you’re really doing in my opinion is you’re putting it back into their laps by saying, gosh, I don’t know. She just asked me what I’d like for dinner and I was irritable with her. Why should I be that way? And I said, so if you as a family start looking at your wristbands before you respond like that, I said, you’ll see a difference. And then why don’t you at your family dinners, which I think is a total lost art, because people don’t have family dinners. I mean, I come from old school and we had family dinners when I was growing up and as we were rearing our child, but if you could just have a quiet time with your family and get the pause and pray book out and just let everybody listen to it together and then respond at the dinner table or in carpool or when you’re together, just ask them, what did that mean to you? And how can you weave that into your lifestyle today and just make your life a little bit better? And so that in itself is that intentional habit that we often react without pausing. So if we could just pause, look at the bracelet and say, how can I respond a little bit better than I typically do?

Well, exactly what you’re saying is we’re often reactive rather than proactive. Absolutely. Rather than intentional, we just, let’s just respond. Let’s react to the situation. I’m very reactive, unfortunately. So anytime I can slow down to be considerate of my reaction so I can be proactive in my behavior is way better than when I just react. Something that we always encourage couples to do, especially in a difficult situation, in a fight, in an argument, if you can both convince yourself to pray,

And

I just want to steal your phrase, pause and pray, and this is a good resource for all of us in our marriages to in those moments, if one of you could say, can we pause and pray?

Yes. Oh yes.

It’s so diffusing.

Yes,

Absolutely. Just in the fight. But then immediately you go before the throne room of God together and you realize how small the thing is that you’re fighting about. You’re like, why aren’t we even fighting about this?

Yes,

We’re one, we’re in the same team. Why am I angry? And then the Holy Spirit’s like, now I’m going to speak to you in this situation.

And you know what also Aaron, in that when you pause and pray, that invites the Holy Spirit into the atmosphere and where Jesus is, Satan cannot abide. And so I always say, when you go into a situation, just invite the Holy Spirit to go with you and it puts a barrier. And Satan cannot stay in the presence of Jesus. And when the presence of Jesus is there, Satan just has to flee

Any influence he has. He says, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Absolutely.

We resist by going to the Lord.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yes. I love that.

Yes,

Bobby, there’s let,

Can I backtrack on one thing that we just said was in terms of the pausing to just react differently or pausing to diffuse something, it is a journey to do that. And I can tell you firsthand when you write about the fruit of the spirit every day, you sure better be living it and you better live it behind closed doors. And believe me, I work on it every single day. It’s a lifelong journey to pause and use the fruit of the spirit, but after a while it becomes more habitual. But the reason I bring this back up is when you first start doing this and then and you don’t use it period of sometimes, don’t beat yourself up. I did that. Oh gosh, I thought I had this. I thought I paused and didn’t react that time, but I did this time. Just know that it is a journey. It takes time. So be patient with yourself in being able to do this. At least you’ve started it. That’s why we call it the color of the day challenge. Start it. Nothing comes easy that is rewarding. And so I just wanted to give your audience a little bit, give yourself a break here.

It’s good for me to hear. My wife and I just had a temperament assessment. We did some temperament assessments and we both found out that we’re both extremely hard on ourselves. So it’s good to remember to have, if we’re going to have grace for others and we should have some grace from ourselves.

And that’s a really sneaky tool of Satan to sneak in and just help, as I said before, help us, make us feel unworthy and make us feel, condemn us, beat ourselves up. And again, I can’t say this enough, it’s like what helped me was I just said, okay, if I’m not going to forgive myself, then I’m nailing Jesus back to the cross because he forgave me. He forgot it. He’s given me a do over. We can’t necessarily give ourselves a do over, but we can take good lessons from what we learn and become better for it.

Yeah. A good reminder for us as believers, the devil brings condemnation and the spirit of God brings conviction. They’re very different things.

Absolutely.

They’re very different things and we need to respond to it appropriately and come to the Lord and be like, thank you for convicting me. You love me and help me to grow. Help me to be better. Couldn’t

Be said. Be more

Beautifully. Yeah, thank you. Bobby. There was something that we talked about and when we had our pre-interview, phone call, you talked about getting on and off the potter’s wheel, and I just thought it was a really beautiful thing to consider for us and for my listeners because God, he’s the potter. We’re the clay. He’s molding us, he’s transforming us. He’s we we’re currently sanctified and we’re being sanctified. We’re currently new creations and we’re currently being transformed into new creations. It’s this constant, we exist in a state and we’re becoming something. So I just want you to share about that. I thought it was beautiful.

Well, we all are resistant to change, even if it’s dysfunctional change. Change is just frightening for people. And I think that when we anticipate changes, we don’t want to change at any capacity, even if we can become better. I mean, there’s that barrier. Yeah, we fight it. We fight

Tooth

And nail, we fight it terribly. And so it was a real battle for me to try to finally get to the point where I welcomed being on the potter’s wheel after so many years of resisting. I mean, I can see how my life, if I could have had a do-over my life, would’ve been so much easier if I said, okay, I’m ready here. I’m not going to fight getting on that potter’s wheel because I know the Lord wants the best for us all, and he doesn’t want to put us through things unnecessarily, but he knows what we need to be equipped to do things. Believe me, these last four and a half years, as I said in the beginning, I feel like many times I have been hanging off the end of the limbs from my fingertips because there was no budget for this. I mean, I wasn’t equipped for this.

(49:59)
I wasn’t a writer. I have no technology brain at all, as you well know already, Aaron. And yet the Lord has just used those moments to put me on the potters. We ended up put me into difficult situations and challenging situations to be where he could use me most and be most effective because our ultimate goal is just to be empty vessels for him to work through, fill us up. I’m capable of any of this whatsoever. So now I really welcome. And I asked him, I said, Hey, this is a challenging situation. Would you please put me on the potter’s wheel and equip me to become what I need so that I don’t have to encounter this challenge again? Because I don’t want to have a do-over. I don’t want to go around the mountain again. I want to please, please just refine me. Now, often though it isn’t, I equate it also Aaron to unpeeling the onion because I think, oh, I get that now, but why didn’t I get that back then?

(51:04)
I wasn’t ready for it. It’s a layered process. We have to be ready as an example. We don’t put our little child out in diapers free to run across the street. It’s a gradual thing. They have to grow into that. So I will just say Jesus has made life very simplistic if we just sit back, pause and reflect on how easy he’s made it because he will carry our burdens. One Peter five, seven, cast your cares on me for I care for you. He knows the future. He wants the best for us. It took me 69 years almost to learn that. So I hope someone,

And I’m sure you’re still learning it, right?

Oh, and I’ll worry it to the day he calls me home. There’s never an end to learning. I thirst to learn more and more. But I’ll tell you, had I willingly wanted to be on the potters wheel many years ago, my life would’ve been, I wouldn’t have all these wrinkles and gray hairs under this bleach blonde.

It’s one of the truest statements, this idea of being on the potters wheel of allowing God to mold us. Many of us, we want the end result, but we don’t want the means to the

End. Exactly.

We want the end result. And I think of Joseph, he didn’t get put right into the pharaoh’s palace and put on the

Throne. Very good

Example. He went through a lot of really hard things. And without each of those things that he went through, he wouldn’t have been prepared, ready, qualified in God’s terms of course, but also being sensitive to the spirit of God and listening to him and trusting him and worshiping him. And God took those moments, the potter, he’s being molded into a vessel to be used for a very specific thing.

Exactly.

I think about when my wife and I, when we were trying to get out of debt early on in our marriage, we just totally felt God was like, I want you out of debt so you’d be free to serve me. That was what we heard and that’s what we believed. And I knew people, it was school debt, and I knew people in our church that anonymous donors just paid off their school loans.

And

I’m like, I was so happy for them. I was like, that’s amazing. And then I’m thinking, okay, Lord. And we prayed nonstop for someone to come in to pay off my debt.

But

You know what we also did? We worked on paying off the debt.

Oh,

Wow. And so we’re paying off the debt and praying, God, get this debt paid off, get this debt paid off. And we look back at it and we’re like, God did pay off the debt, but not the way we wanted it done.

Yes, exactly.

He allowed us. I love that. And that season of us going through and suffering, having nothing to pay off this debt was how God wanted us to pay off the debt because there was something, it was that he was shaping us into something. And if we fought that and we’re like, well, God hasn’t brought someone yet, so I guess he doesn’t want us to pay it off,

We

Would’ve missed out on the whole lesson, the whole thing that he was trying to mature in us of understanding finances and giving

And

Trusting him.

That reminds me, Aaron of a very, very dear friend, Richard Montez. Unfortunately, he passed away last week, but he,

Oh, no. So

Sorry. Had the kind of faith and what will equate to what you’re saying, he taught me so much. Richard would fly in to a city over all over the world as the Lord directed. And as an example, let’s say the Lord told him to go to Brazil and he would go to Brazil and he had written 100 different musical plays that were Christian based.

And

He would say, okay, Lord, I’m flying in to Brazil. As you told me, he would get off the plane, he would have no funds to do this and no plan. He would get off the plane, go to a coffee shop, go to a church, go to wherever he would land, and start talking about his vision to do a play. And people that were not even trained would come. He would work for 30 days, attract people to be in the play, train them, go to get a facility, to have the play. And he said, thousands and thousands of people would be blessed. This is what Richard said to me. He says, Bobby, we wait around waiting for the door to open, just say a revolving door, and we just stand there. Okay, Lord, I’m waiting for you to open that door. But he says, until we move forward into action, the door will remain closed until we get there, and then it opens. So we have to do exactly what you and your wife did. If we have that will to follow God’s plan, we have to move forward and watch what God will do. And so many people say to me, but what if I go in the wrong direction? If you have an intentional heart to please the Lord and you, he’s going to

Direct you,

He will course correct. You happen to go on the wrong one. So a lot of people, I think are paralyzed from moving forward because they’re thinking, oh, I’m waiting to hear from the Lord, just like what you and your wife? But no, you moved forward so that revolving door would open. And I always say he closes a door because he’s got a wider one and a better one to open. If we could just have that mindset like you and your wife did in approaching life, it would take a lot of the challenges away.

Well, and it’s that idea of Abraham. God called him and he says, leave your people and go to a place. I’m going to tell you. But he doesn’t tell ’em where. He says, I’m going to take you to a place. And then it says, Abraham and the next morning got up and went. And then on the way, God says, here’s where I’m taking you. Go towards this mountain and you see faith is the action of belief. When you believe what God says, then you move in that direction and that. So when it came to our finances giving and getting out of debt, we knew God wanted us out of debt and so we started moving that direction.

We

Started, okay, we’re going to get out of debt. We’re going to work hard to pay it off. And all the while praying that he would miraculously pay it off, he never did. But miraculously we paid it off in like two years.

Miraculously he paid it off and made you better for it, right? Through your intentionality.

He matured us through our obedience. We followed him and we grew. And now our encouragement is people is like, okay, he may do that. He may bring someone along to just wipe something out to change your situation, to give you something you need, but he may also want you to do it and want you to move forward and trust him in all of this.

Exactly. And he will give you a PhD degree

Through,

And so that’s something that we gain that money can’t buy. Absolutely. It is a beautiful thing. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that.

Well, thank you for sharing everything you shared. Bobby, I want to give you an opportunity before we close out, would you please just share where people can find what you have going on? Mention the app again. What’s the website that can go to please

I’ll, so it’s Branch to Hope. Our website is Branch to hope.app and that will take you also to the app or you can go to the app store or the Google store. That will also show you on the app our Color of the Day challenge. And then we have a place where you can purchase the bracelets, the books and different products that we have. The logo, if you want to wear a green shirt that has our piece on it or Blue for Joy. We have a lot of products on there, but we feel like our book Pause and Pray as a gift that keeps on giving.

(59:13)
I was so inspired by Sarah Young who wrote Jesus calling, which I think so many people have had and have given his gift. I know I’ve given him thousands all over the world, but it’s interesting. I had an inspiration like 40 years ago when my daughter went off to college. I went into her room every day and I sat in a little chair and I read Jesus calling and purpose-driven life for her. And so I remember one day specifically, and I had kept this in my heart until recently, that I said to the Lord, oh, if I could just do any kind of thing that Sarah Young has been doing for other people in my life, that would be such a blessing. And basically the Lord heard my prayer and I never thought for 40 years that anything like this would happen. But I just heard a beautiful comment just two days ago that someone said, I needed your message two days ago, or it’s not my message, it’s the Lord’s message.

(01:00:20)
It was just like it was written just for me. Well, I had heard that from people saying about Jesus calling, I needed that and she probably wrote it 40 years ago. So I feel just blessed for that. So our goal is just to try to get people to wear the color of the day bracelets and just start sharing how easy it is for people to change their habits. We feel like it’s going to be a movement, a wave across America. We’ve just got a lot of people like you, Erin. They’re trying to share our message and we are just so grateful. We are just so grateful for it.

Well, Bobby, I’m grateful for you. Thank you so much for giving an hour of your time today.

Oh, thank you.

I think this is going to be a blessing to all of our listeners, and I am going to put all your links in our show notes so people can get your daily color, all the stuff that you got going on. That’s correct. And also I’m going to request, if you don’t mind sending me some of those bracelets I want to show you, I want to give,

Actually I did last week. I sent bracelets for you and all your children.

Oh, awesome.

And books for you and all your,

They might be at the mail. Then I have a mailbox that you sent ’em to. I’m going to go check today. Yes,

They will be there. And I love to sign on your birthdays. That’s why I remember I asked you your birthdays, so I’ve signed the books on your birthdays.

Thank you so much for

That. Yeah, no, it is a blessing. It is a blessing. It, it’s all God’s anyway. It’s not ours. It’s just blessed to be empty vessels, as I said, just for him to use, just to try to help people that are feeling hopeless in this world today. It’s a chaotic world, and if the power of one moment can do all this, everybody’s power of moment can change things.

Well, thank you for encouraging us to walk in the fruits of the Spirit, to pray more, and most importantly to stay on the wheel so that God can mold us into what he has for us. Bobby, thank you so much. I hope you have an awesome day.

Thank you, Aaron. I’m so grateful for you.

Do you desire to pray more for your spouse? Do you desire to pray more with your spouse? We understand that you may not know where to start or maybe you feel uncomfortable praying or maybe you don’t know what to pray, or maybe you simply want to add something more to your current prayer life. This is why we wrote the Marriage Gift 365 Prayers for Our Marriage. We desire that it would be used as a daily reminder and catalyst for you and your spouse to grow a dynamic and consistent prayer life together. This book is a compilation of 365 unique and powerful prayers that cover a range of diverse topics that every marriage deals with. You can read it alone or ideally you read it with your spouse. Also, we hope that the topics that are brought up in these prayers would become a starting point for deeper and more intimate conversations with your spouse and a desire to seek God on these matters together.

(01:03:23)
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