Marriage by Design-Devotional Series Ep 2

Aaron Smith (00:00)
when we were first married, those first four and a half years, that was a constant question in our hearts and to each other of like, why doesn’t this look like what God said it was going to look like? We thought, quote unquote, we did the right things and waited and tried doing the right things. We serve God. We kind of talked about this a little bit last episode, but it didn’t feel, it didn’t look like what we thought we were promised.

Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast. We’re your hosts. I’m Jennifer. This is my husband, Aaron. Howdy. Hello, everyone. Today’s episode, we are asking the question, did God design marriage? Of course, we know the quick answer to that, but we’re going to dive in here in just a second. Before we get started, please hit that like button. Also, make sure to subscribe wherever you watch or listen. That’s how you’re going to get all the episodes. That’s how you’re going to get That’s how you’re to get them all. We got, what is it? 28 more.

weeks of this devotional series. so we want to get you of was brave of you to throw out that number. know. Just kidding. Math. It’s hard math-ing. But we want to get you all those episodes, so you guys subscribe. And also, we’re going to continue with this podcast even after that. But get subscribed. Make sure you don’t miss out on any of these episodes. Get your spouse involved also. Subscribe them. And our encouragement is that you would be in this with us in our community, the Mary Jeffery God community, and go into this devotional with us over the next 30 weeks. We’re on week…

of the devotional. exciting. But last thing I want to ask you to do is go to shop.marriageaftergod.com. That is where you’re going to pick up copies of Husband After God and Wife After God. That way you can have them in your hands if you don’t already have them, and you can go through this devotional with us over the next 30 weeks. It also supports our ministry. It also supports your marriage. So it’s really a win-win. So go check out shop.marriageaftergod.com. Today’s episode. Here we go.

God’s design for marriage. So of course he did design it. It was very intentional. Yes. I was being facetious. I know. There’s just no way that marriage exists as a byproduct of the existence of humans. We just came up with the idea. We’re not that cool. We have some pretty good ideas. But marriage, we even see it nowadays. It’s such a difficult concept. A lot of people don’t want to get married anymore. Divorces just…

rampant in the church, outside of the church. Marriage is a hard thing, it’s hard concept, but it’s definitely God’s idea. And I also think it’s incredible that the Bible opens up with essentially marriage. It doesn’t talk about a wedding in the sense of what we would understand a wedding, but… But it does talk about two becoming one flesh. Absolutely. And then when the Bible talks about marriage, it references Adam and Eve and the order of that. And that’s kind of what we’re going to talk about today. So with the same intentionality that he put into us, like creating humans and making us in his image,

He also created marriage for an intentional purpose and he established it. Like he came up with it in his mind and made it work. And so we’re excited to dive into that design today. I thought about a funny example when we were- I saw this and I was like, oh, this is a good one. This was great actually. I don’t know how many parents out there can relate, but our house is always covered in Legos and I find them everywhere. It’s always that nagging thought of when I’m vacuuming, do I just vacuum it up or should I pick it up?

I just vacuum them all up. If they’re small enough, it goes right in the vacuum. For me, it depends on what style of Lego it is because some of them are more intricate. It’s a special piece. I know which one’s my boys’. Yeah. So anyways, here’s my analogy. We’re Lego lovers and so just came to my mind. But if my kids received a box full of intricate pieces of Legos with no manual, sure, they’re pretty creative. They could probably come up with something. But

How awesome is it when it comes with a manual and it’s perfected already every piece intentionally placed to make something of a masterpiece? isn’t there a difference between… Huge difference. …making something up and then building something by design? Yep, there’s something fun we all love. I shouldn’t say we all because I’m sure there’s some people out there that are weird and don’t like Legos. Just kidding.

But when you build something, you’re like, this is cool. It’s got all the… You tried mimicking something that you have seen before, but it never turns out exactly right. But when you have the Lego set and the manual and it goes step by step and it’s like, this piece goes on this, turn it around, piece goes here. And when you’re done, you have what the box shows. There’s an image on the box and you’re like, this looks like that. And you feel proud that you made it look like what it was supposed to, what it was intended and designed for.

So that was kind of my little silly analogy for marriage, but so many of us are trying to build marriages without ever cracking open the manual to see where the pieces go. And so that was kind of my correlation. I’ll say, feel like often we tend to build our marriages the royal way off of other manuals we’ve seen, maybe our own parents or others in our life and we’re trying to avoid those manuals, but you’re right. We should be going back to the source. Yeah. The one who designed it, created it and established it.

So the potential for a masterpiece is it’s in our hands. Like we’ve got all the pieces and we just need to figure out how to accomplish the masterpiece. The thing is that we’re going to be proud of. Quick little question on this analogy for you. How frustrating is it when you’re going through and you’re building that like a set and you can’t find the one piece it’s asking for? That’s frustrating. Why’d you bring that up? Well, because sometimes we’re like…

There’s people that are listening to go back to marriage and they think that they’re trying to follow what God says and they feel like they’re like, what’s missing? What’s this piece that’s out of there? So the analogy just goes so far. No, it’s so good because I think even as Christians, we’ve talked about this a lot. A lot of our ministry is ministering to Christians, people who are already saved. And guys, we struggle. We struggle even though we’re Christians, even though we understand God and have the manual and open it. Maybe we even open it pretty regularly and we still struggle.

I think that there are times when we get frustrated over, what is this supposed to be? What are we building here? I’ll say when we were first married, those first four and a half years, that was a constant question in our hearts and to each other of like, why doesn’t this look like what God said it was going to look like? We thought, quote unquote, we did the right things and waited and tried doing the right things. We serve God. We kind of talked about this a little bit last episode, but it didn’t feel, it didn’t look like what we thought we were promised.

We can always be in different places in our marriages and just realize, like, oh, this doesn’t feel like it should be this way. But it’s okay. And as long as we continue to pursue opening up that manual and getting in God’s Word, He will hand us the pieces and show us what to do with them. And help us build it. Like, man, this is good analogy. Like when you sit with our littler kids that are just learning how to build and…

They need help putting the pieces and what piece does that look like and where does that go? And that’s what the Holy Spirit does with us is teaches us what his word says and helps us to walk it out when we keep in step with him, when we follow him. I was going to transition to the next note and I started reading it and I realized I didn’t put that. So you might want to. I will. So this is a good one. We were just talking about how this was in our idea, marriage, the design of it, the idea of it.

I did some AI research. Not everybody’s going to like that you just… That’s fine. It’s one of the things I like to use it for, research. It actually often does a way better job than Google. I was looking up in the animal kingdom, because we talked last episode about creation and how we are so unique and different than all the creation and creatures out there. Marriage is one of those unique identifiers of us being humans. Only three to five percent of the entire animal kingdom, all species,

have a monogamous mating pattern, meaning they find a mate and they stay with that mate for lifelong, only three to five percent, making it super rare, extremely rare that in the all of animal kingdom, everything else got created, that there’s any other creatures that sort of resemble marriage or have a monogamous type relationship. what was interesting about the note that it gave me was even amongst

the monogamous quote unquote relationships in other creatures, they are almost rarely exclusively monogamous. They eventually, it used words like divorce, widow, remarriage, occasional infidelity. It used all these marriage terms to describe what animals do in those monogamous relationships. So what’s interesting about it using those terms is those terms are exclusive to human marriage.

And so when an animal is being compared to that, that’s the only words you can use. is no, it’s just in nature. It’s, yeah. So we’re a unique creature that God made, made in his image for certain types of things, for specific things, for specific purposes. ⁓ And so I was just pointing out that in all of creation, we are unique. That God intended and designed marriage for man and a woman to be permanent and consistent.

the Bible says, till death do us part, until we are separated by death. That’s the only thing that should separate us. Now, we know that is not how it works in the world always, but that was God’s intention and design from the beginning, was for that, because it’s objectively the healthiest environment for loving, nurturing, and safety within the family unit. we just wanted to, I want to start with there going from contrasting humans to all the rest of creation. I like the tie-in. Yeah. Okay, so

We’re coming up to one of my absolute favorite verses in the Bible. But we’re just going to talk a little bit about men and women and how we’re just built different in design. We look human, but there are plenty of differences between us. And it’s important for us to embrace these differences because when we embrace that, we’re also celebrating God’s good design. We’re saying, hey, you know what you’re doing. But it’s Psalm 139, and it’s 13 through 18.

This doesn’t look like all of that. This looks like 13 and 14. ⁓ For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Now, side note, if we could just take a moment and get society to feel this way and to believe this, what a difference we would see just in people’s hearts and minds and livelihood and how much impact.

this could have if people truly believe that God made them and that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. Yeah, and it’s actually, it’s exactly why the culture, society, the world, you know, is so opposed to these ideas because if you recognize that we are created in the image of God, if you recognize that it is God that designed and created us, then you have to fear him. You have to trust him. You have to know that, ⁓ there is a God.

And so that’s what’s being attacked constantly. It’s been attacked since the beginning, very much so in current culture is attacking this idea of, like you just said, men and women are very different. We are very unique, or very similar in many ways, but very different in many ways in function, in form. And in need, which we’re going to get into today. Which is beautiful, but it’s right, like you said, it’s worshiping God to recognize and celebrate those things, those differences. The differences aren’t bad.

⁓ They’re needed. I go back to Genesis in the beginning. God saw that Adam was alone. He said, it’s not good that Adam is alone. That man is alone. Not that God didn’t make him good and complete. And not to say that a man couldn’t live a life alone. No. What he’s saying is, man needs a counterpart, needs a partner. We need each other. And he made a woman. so there’s a necessity for each other’s differences and differences of needs.

in giftings and talents and abilities are so necessary. And if you just look at your home in every aspect, when you’re raising children, when you’re creating a home, schooling, all the things, those differences are needed. So we’re going to talk a little bit about you brought up needs, I brought up needs. So there is a difference in needs between a husband and a wife. ⁓ So although both men and women need both love and respect,

There is a difference that the Bible mentions about men having a very, very deep need for respect and women having that longing for love. So we’re going to speak to that right now. I don’t know if you want to… Yeah, well, so going into those understandings of love and respect, I know there’s a book out there, but the Bible is the one that has shown us this truth. And also, objectively in life, you know it. The husbands that are listening, they know it.

It’s innate. It’s intrinsic. It’s deep inside of you of a desire for respect, not just in your home from your wife, but from anyone. Men desire to be respected. Now, that doesn’t mean that men are always respectable, but that deep desire is still in there. And then we get affected when those needs aren’t being met. And wives, women have a deep desire for love and affection, for care, for concern. ⁓ You see this. I have daughters.

They need that from their fathers. And both of those needs, both of those things are beautiful in the sense that they are reflecting the image of God in this world and to each other. And it’s something that we should not just throw to the wayside in our marriages and recognize, ⁓ these are needs that we have. They’re there. They’re necessities. They can’t be pushed aside. And we also can’t just define them however we want.

We want to define them the way the Bible does, and we want to consider them the way the Bible wants us to consider them. But they’re there. And I do desire to be respected, and it’s my job as a man to be respectable, and you desire to be loved, and it’s your job as a woman to be lovable. And so, ⁓ you know, just drawing from the husband after God and wife after God devotionals, ⁓ we share things ⁓ very similar in both studies. ⁓ Just how respect for men, it re-energizes them.

It gives them confidence to face the challenges of the day. When you feel respected, you actually feel like you could conquer anything. And it is true. And every man listening is going to know this. When someone comes to you, like anyone in your life, it doesn’t matter if it’s your wife or your kids or coworkers or your boss. Now, certain people are going to have certain levels of power in the way they respect. But when someone comes up to you and you know that they respect you and they look at you and they’re like,

I come to you for advice. come to you for, I know you can do this and I respect you and I’m going to honor you in that. It makes you feel really good. And men pursue that. We desire to be around people that respect us like that way. And so when a wife does it, she’s on a category that’s really high on the power that she has in your life to build you up simply by respecting you and submitting to you and honoring you in so many ways. There’s a young man that’s very… ⁓

known for this concept of you would do that to a man, he’ll feel like he can do anything. Like you just said, he’ll feel like he can conquer the whole world. He’ll go and… Good. yeah, I was just going to say and the reason that men feel this way is because being respected contributes to that strong foundation from which they can lead and love well. So when you feel respected, you have this kind of like bolstered confidence that I can do this. I can go out of my way to lead.

in that extra way or love in that extra way. And a good thing to consider men is just look at some men in your life. I’m sure there are men that you deeply respect and then I’m sure there men in your life that you have no respect for at all. Look at the difference in them. Why do you respect the men that you do and why do you not respect the men that you don’t? And it’s a good litmus test to see like, am I, do I exemplify any of the

attributes that this man that I respect has? Or do I more resemble the one I don’t respect? It’s just a good way to be like, ⁓ see where you’re at. So it’s just an idea. So then moving on to the women, when a woman is pursued romantically and loved unconditionally, she feels accepted and secure and safe, which lays the foundation for her then to serve as a helper and to fulfill her commandment by God to submit to her husband.

And so we can see how, yes, we both in a marriage need love and respect. Both of us desire that and want that. However, there is an extra level of need when it comes to the man being respected that helps him lead and love well. And when the woman is pursued and loved well, she also can then serve in the ways that God has commanded her. Yeah, I would say these are really beautiful. These are just two sides of the same coin.

⁓ A man being truly honored and respected, that is loving, that is love. They feel the most loved in those situations, in those relationships. And a woman who is a wife who is pursued and listened to and held and comforted by her husband is loved. She feels that, like you said, the safest, the securest, has no concern over where they’re at in their relationship, doesn’t feel being thrown to and fro with just…

the ideas of loneliness or neglect, but it’s secure. so it’s two sides of the same coin. is love on both sides and it is respect on both sides, but they’re defined very differently for each other because God designed us differently. And going back to that manual that we were talking about in the beginning and answering this question, did God design marriage? We’re going to look at a verse that we actually shared in the last episode, but it’s just so important to marriage that we’re going to revisit it. And it’s Ephesians 5.

32 and 33, it says, this mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband. ⁓ I believe and we believe that ⁓ scripture shows us the way. It illuminates how things should be done. So God created marriage, He designed it, He established it, and now He’s telling us, hey, this is how you should be in it. And so He’s speaking to the

man specifically to fulfill a need in his wife to be loved. And to the wife, he’s saying, respect your husband. Yeah. And we see this again, the why. We talked about this in last episode. The why to this is because when we walk this out in our marriage, we are representing Christ and the church. That doesn’t mean every marriage represents Christ and the church, but that’s the purpose of it. Marriage is meant to represent Christ and the church. The woman

represents the beauty of the church. That’s what the Bible says. And the reason a wife would submit to her husband is because the church is to submit to Christ in all things. And the husband is to represent Christ. It doesn’t mean that all husbands are Christ. We’re to represent him to our spouse, to our children, to the world. And when you see that relationship, it’s meant to be a light. It’s meant to be a picture. It’s meant to be a symbol to point to the gospel. That’s exactly what it’s meant to represent.

So as we say all throughout Marriage After God, the book, what gospel is your marriage preaching? Is it preaching a false gospel of brokenness, of irreconcilable differences, of you name it, the things that we fear, God leaving us, abandoning us? Is that what our marriages are showing? Or is it reconciliation, redemption, freedom, joy, peace, patience, kindness, love? Those are the things that the gospel is supposed to bring to us.

is meant to bring to us. And so that’s what the design of the two parts coming together is meant to do, is to be that gospel. So I just want to go to the next part of this, which is we have our commands, right? I’m to love you as Christ loves the church, you’re to submit and respect your husband in all things, those just by themselves very difficult things to do. Okay? They’re made even more difficult when your spouse does not do them.

I’m gonna say that again. They’re already difficult in themselves. They’re even more difficult to fulfill when your spouse does not do them. Which we all know happens often. We fail each other. We make mistakes. We walk out days that are very self-focused. And so I’m just saying that for all of us. We’re all in the same boat. And I will throw myself under the bus that for a long time and even periodically in my flesh.

I think I’m not going to do that because you didn’t do this. I’m not going to love you because you disrespected me. I’m not going to walk out what I’m told to walk out because of your behavior. That’s a sinful way of thinking. That’s a fleshly way of thinking. Fulfilling our roles, fulfilling what God’s commanded us to do in the way we operate is not contingent on the actions and responses of your spouse. Repeat that one more time.

Our obedience to God is not contingent on the behavior or decisions of your spouse. So just like Christ going to the cross wasn’t contingent on everyone becoming perfect first. He says, yet, while you were still sinners, Christ died for you. That’s how we should be walking this out. We honor and obey God first, regardless of how our wife or husband is walking.

Yeah. And I think that this is the key to breaking those, ⁓ those cycles that you get into where you just feel like your foundation has been shaken and you guys are questioning a lot and you maybe you’re all just, you know, on different pages. I don’t know how else to say that when you don’t feel loved and you don’t feel cherished and you don’t feel pursued and you don’t feel respected, somebody’s got to stop that cycle and you have to do it regardless of whether or not your spouse is

fulfilling their commandment. Yeah, do you remember that? You just made me think of this old kid toy we used to have. It’s got a stick and then it’s got two weights that swing freely. And your goal is just supposed to like clack them back. It’s called a clacker or something like that. I think I know what you’re talking about. And you’re supposed to get it perfect where they bounce back and forth. I feel like that’s what you’re talking about is your two weights and like instead of putting them together and spinning them together and they spin perfectly and they don’t clack and make a bang.

just constantly hit each other. Sometimes it feels like that. It’s not, so you’re oh, it bumped in here. I’m going go over here. You bump over here. when you… It’s clunky. Yeah, it’s clear and it’s loud and it hurts. But if you put them together and you kind of just spin them centrifugally, nice and smooth, they just kind of go around in a circle. It’s nice. Not loud, not painful. But yeah, so when you both are waiting for the other person to be obedient, to be obedient, you’re not being obedient.

Neither of you are. And to be honest, and we tell this to people all the time that they say, hey, what do do if my husband’s not a believer? Like, he’s not going to fall in line with these things. Or my wife, she’s not walking with the Lord. And what do I do? Or my spouse is a believer, but they’re being rebellious. They’re not following what the Bible says. We’re not to wait around for our spouse to follow God. God wants our hearts and our whole hearts now.

And we chase him and we follow him even in the midst of our spouse not. Just like I’m not changing, I’m going to follow God regardless of the whole world does. So if you’re thinking about like, am I supposed to do that when my spouse does X, Y, Z? It’s hard. You just do it. Yeah. Well, and you, but you can’t just do, you need to do it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Like we were talking about earlier is he helps us. We need to run to him in prayer and he needs to be our shelter and our fortress.

He needs to be the strength that we have and our shield and our conqueror for us. How many times in those moments in marriage where we’ve been clunky, have you had to ask and plead and petition the Holy Spirit to help you obey His word and still love me and fulfill all the things that He’s called you to do? I would say every time. Because in the midst of it, my flesh is all worked up. I’m feeling disrespected or misunderstood or…

justified in my anger, whatever it is, and want to win. And I think Jordan Peterson put it really well. He’s like, you won in your fight with your spouse, you both lost. And so the goal is not winning. The goal is reconciliation always. The goal is wholeness and unity always. And sometimes that means humbling yourself. Often it does. But yes, go run into the God and my prayer being, God, I have no idea what to do right now. There’s been many prayers that we stopped and we’re both still angry. And it’s like, God, I

I’m really angry. Will you please help us? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. It really does diffuse like 75 % of the weight of it. Sometimes more, but sometimes we’re also really worked up. But it’s running to God and asking the Holy Spirit to interrupt us. Interrupt our flesh is really what’s going on because we have all this cortisol.

all these endorphins and things going on, maybe not endorphins, what’s the My hormones are super balanced, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. Oh yeah. Regardless of how our hormones are going, like you said, any of those situations, we got to run to God and ask him to help us because in midst of it, I don’t feel like I can do it sometimes. I don’t know what to do. So we’d love to share a quote from Wife After God. It says this, this was God’s great design for marriage.

that you would respect your husband through your words and actions and that he would love you unconditionally as Christ loves the church. By satisfying these needs in marriage, you and your husband will experience a rich relationship abundant in generosity, kindness, faithfulness, and intimacy. Amen. Don’t we all want that? Yes. And just like what Erin was saying, ⁓ it’s your ⁓ ability, your call, and the things that you are supposed to do in your role as a wife or as a husband.

is not contingent on your spouse, you can do it anyways. ⁓ the result is that when you operate in that way and you submit yourself to the Lord and His teaching, that these things do come. Yeah, and it’s one of the hardest things ⁓ to do is to walk out God’s call for you, you know, for a husband to love his wife as Christ loves the church, to be sacrificing for her, to lay down his own pride, his own will.

to bless and serve her, especially when he feels disrespected, especially when he feels forgotten or misunderstood like we were just talking about, frustrations in spouse, a wife feeling unloved, unthought of, uncared for, ⁓ put aside. It’s so difficult in those moments to be obedient to the Word of God. ⁓ And that is the challenge that we would fulfill that covenant regardless of our spouse. ⁓

And like we said, the only motivation is going to be in Christ. Like we have to run to him. John, go ahead. I was just going to say, and you have to be a little bit brave. You have to be a lot of it. Yeah, because in those moments where your flesh is basically telling you to not do anything and or run the other way, Christ is telling you to lean in. And that’s really hard. And sometimes you, don’t know, I can say you, but me, ⁓ you fear like.

you know, what’s their reaction going to be or, you know, how are they going to respond or I don’t know. just I feel like you have to be brave to be able to say, I’m going to do this anyways, regardless of what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling, regardless of the response you get from it. First, John four, 19 says we love because he first loved us. So we realize that the motivation, the foundation from where we are walking these things out is because of what Christ did.

Colossians 3.13, why don’t you read that one? Bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive. So again, this goes back to the idea of reconciliation and just being the first to dive in, just like Christ did. You had mentioned that, you know, he didn’t wait for someone to come up and say, I’m sorry. He didn’t wait for someone to repent first. He just, he went, he went to the cross.

And it says for the joy set before him. he was on another playing level there, but that’s our God. That’s our savior and the one who ⁓ lights the way for us and shows us how to do it. And he’s the one that gives us the strength necessary to love and respect the way he’s called us to do. ⁓ And when we do that, this is reflecting God’s love story. It’s putting a light on it. It’s highlighting it for the world. When you see a husband laying down his life for his family and his wife.

That’s the gospel. Yeah. Romans 5 says… I’ll say that’s pointing to the gospel. Pointing to it. Reflecting it. Romans 5 says, but God shows his love for us and that while we’re still sinners, Christ died for us. Yeah. And so when it calls the husbands to love like Christ loves the church, that does mean that we need to be the initiators, We need to be the initiators in transforming our homes, our families, pursuing our wives better.

Seeing the role that we have in such a plane than we currently do. Like, ⁓ how would Christ love my wife right now? How would Jesus pursue? And then just think about for yourself, how have you been pursued by God? How have you been forgiven by God? How has God been patient with you or kind to you? ⁓ That puts a lot of things in perspective. Totally. Yeah. And in doing your part, so speaking to the individual part in marriage,

By loving and respecting your spouse, you will be reflecting that same love, like you had just mentioned, the same love that Christ displayed for His church of undeserved sinners. It was undeserved. And this type of love is transforming and redeeming. And so everything we’ve been focusing on is like how we can be obedient regardless of our spouse’s obedience. But I want to highlight something. I want to make a note on something, okay?

If we consider that the way we love and serve our spouse is one way to encourage and help them to walk in obedience. Romans 14 13 says, therefore, let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or a hindrance in the way of a brother. If I’m neglecting my wife, if I’m being lazy as a lover, if I’m checking out every night and not checking in with my wife, if I’m not listening,

being a good listener, if I’m being impatient or unkind, if I’m doing these things for my wife, how much harder does that make it for you to feel like you can submit and to respect me? Yeah, I think if anything, it gets us in that clacking mode. So it’s a stumbling block. When we do that, we are literally, we do this, men. We’re like, but she needs to do this and this. And then the question is like, well, how easy have you made it for her to do that?

Again, this is not that she has an excuse not to, but it’s a stumbling block. Just like if you take a drink of alcohol in front of an alcoholic, you’re like, yeah, sure, he’s trying his hardest. And then you’re like, oh, but I’m fine. I can do what I want to do. And you’re making it harder for your brother to stay faithful to that. So husband’s wives, not only is it their responsibility, your own responsibility to walk these things out, but you can actually make it easier.

You can remove the stumbling blocks from your spouse to make it easier for them to walk in these things. Then you get that’s when you get the clacker and you spin it and the two little hard balls are going in the same direction. There’s no noise and smooth and it’s nice. And so I just wanted to remind us that not only do we have our own responsibility, but we also can encourage and make it easier for our spouse to also be obedient by taking away our own stumbling blocks that we put in front of them. It’s good. It’s really good.

Something else that I just want to share with you guys is the design of marriage, the way God created it, is so marvelous and so wonderful and it’s so refining. And I don’t know if you have anything that you want to share about this, but just how in our relationship, going through the challenges of you learning how to love me and me learning how to respect you and us doing that love and respect for each other, that we grow and that we are refined.

through the relationship that we have, which is a part of his design. If I’m honest, I’ll say I feel like 18 years in, for the majority of our marriage, I’ve been like crawling as a baby in understanding how to love you as my wife. And I feel like I’m maybe in our 18 years, like starting to walk like a toddler. I’m looking at our little baby who’s learning how to walk. And I feel like that I need God to hold my hands and help me walk and love you better and be a better listener and be more. ⁓

careful with your heart. ⁓ And so I think I’m a toddler when it comes to loving you. And hopefully one day I’ll be walking as a man and love you better. That’s very beautiful. Super humble response. But yes, I agree that there’s so much learning to do. But again, part of God’s design of marriage was that we would not be alone and that we would have someone to do this with and that he would use

the covenant of marriage to bring that maturity and bring that growth within us. Through all the conflicts and hardships and rubbing up against each other and the friction of it all. Where do you feel you’re at with respecting and submitting to me? I feel like I’m right there with you. Toddler? Toddler’s together. But you know what? I appreciate it. And we have a lot more years to go to learn. Well, what’s funny about Emryn is our toddler right now and she’s starting to walk. She’s barely a But she gets so

courageous and confident that she actually tries to run and then she falls and I feel like that sometimes where I’m like there’s this small moment where I’m sprinting and then I fall. But like I said, we have a God that picks us back up and says, good job. We’re like, we’re always excited for it. don’t get mad at her when she tries to run. We say, slow down, slow down. It’s okay. You’re learning. And then we try and pick her back up and she tries to run again.

Okay, I shared with you guys that we were going to end every episode with a marriage after God quote. So this is from our book, Marriage After God. A marriage after God is a team moving together in one mind, one heart, one spirit, and in one direction with their eyes on heavenly and eternal things. Oneness is the joining together of a husband and wife. No longer are you two individuals experiencing life, rather you are united as one flesh. And then I pulled this extra. It’s a bonus. Bonus quote.

chasing boldly after God’s purpose for your life together, understanding that purpose and fulfilling that purpose is all a result of knowing God and submitting to Him in reverence. And so we just want to encourage you guys to be in the Word together and search out those scriptures that talk about marriage like Ephesians 5 and really ask God, what is my role and how am I supposed to love and respect my spouse? And what else am I supposed to be doing for them that it talks about in the Word of God? Because when we

go to him, when we submit to him, when we trust him, incredible things happen. It’s so good. Amen. Let’s get some discussion questions for you all to consider this week as you go about your life being married with your spouse. ⁓ In what ways does your husband show you love? This is for the wives, of course. So I would say physical affection. Yeah, lots of different areas of physical You’re speaking of like hugs.

Hug, handholds, playing with my hair, more intimate things, but you do like to be physical and I appreciate that because it reminds me without having any words that you’re there, you’re near. You’ve always believed in my abilities. I remember when I turned 18, we weren’t even dating yet and for my birthday, you gave me a journal and in the front cover you inscribed in it just, I don’t know if it was a poem or just like a letter, but you basically just said that my words are going to change the world for God.

You remember this? It was so powerful. You still have the journal. I still have it, yeah. Of course. Of course. But you’ve always encouraged me along the ways to use my abilities to serve God and you’ve always believed in that. I feel like that’s love. ⁓ You always point me to truth, especially when I struggle with doubt or I’m just frustrated over things that I don’t understand. You show me in the Word where I can go to get comforted. ⁓ And you have babies with me.

Say that louder. You have lots of babies with me. Yeah, a few of them. We have six now. So that’s been great. And then randomly getting me things that you know I desire, want. I’m like going through the whole list. Like this is everything. is all the way for you. Quality time is a big one. I don’t feel like these are in order though of importance. ⁓ I don’t know. just wrote it down. Something that I’ve been working on is trying to be a better listener. you? And I know you love to just…

I don’t want to say unload, but you want to open up. I think it’s called noodling. Noodling, yes. Noodling. Yeah, where it stops and where it ends, there’s just so much in between. I’ve been trying to not give advice in those moments because most men are this way. It’s like, well, why don’t you do this? And you’re like, it’s not.

Like, I’m just trying to tell you something. Don’t tell me what to do. I think most of our conversations that go that way are like, hey, I got five more things in the queue I got to share. So let me get through it all first. What I’ve been practicing saying, man, this is a little trick is just say, must be hard. Must be hard. That’s something I’ve been trying to do. I’m being sincere when I say that. I know. I appreciate it. I’ve noticed. Why don’t you ask me the question. In what ways does your wife show you respect and submission?

I thought you were going to share what ways you respect me, but that’s why I read it funny. When you trust me and let me direct your family is a big deal. And I’m just going to say this, wives, this is a hard part. Trusting your husband to direct the family and make decisions does not need to mean that they’re going to make the right decision all the time. There’s been times in my life that you’ve let me lead and my decisions weren’t right.

But you’ve prayed through them. And then also when I came around to the other side and, you know, asked for help and direction, you were there with me and that builds me up. Because I’m not going to always have the right answer for everything. And I don’t always have the right response in sharing why I don’t agree. I’ve gotten better over the years, but I can always go. Yeah. And it also doesn’t mean that you’re not supposed to share your opinion or your idea on the direction or your thoughts on it, because God speaks to you all the time and you have the Holy Spirit in you as well. So husbands, we should be

good listeners to our wives and not just be like, no, I’m going to do this no matter what. But definitely when you trust me and let me direct our family, ⁓ even when it’s not what you would do, is a huge thing for me. Makes me feel really loved. When you ⁓ come to me for biblical guidance or spiritual guidance, this is a huge key for wives out there. If you want to see your husband spiritually lead, have you considered going to him for spiritual advice?

Now if your first response is, well, no way because he doesn’t even open the Bible. That’s fine. I promise you if you ask your husband a hundred times for biblical counsel, at some point he’s going be like, she must think I have something to say. I should open up the Bible and find out what the answers are. It’s a huge thing. And do it with a genuine heart like, hey, what do you think about this? What do you think this means? ⁓ When you talk good about me to others, that makes me feel big. Like really huge. Like, ⁓ I’m like…

I’m on top of the world. My trophy has been. Yep, exactly. See, that’s a big deal. That’s a big deal. I’m going to do that one more often. There’s a noted. That’s why I said it. I’m just kidding. No, it really does. When. Yeah.

That’s how I feel loved. Okay. What is one thing that makes it hard for you to respect your husband? In the past, a big, wall that I would run into. Stumbling block. Yeah. Yeah. Was when you struggled with pornography. Yep. And praise God, we have not dealt with that in a very long time, 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. Just because I saw it is just.

Yeah. Well, it’s not respectable. Yeah. So husbands, keep that in mind. If you’re allowing that in your life, ⁓ that’s a huge stomach block for your wife. Wives, if you’re doing that, to be honest, because it’s actually getting more prevalent in women these days. yes, when I was addicted to pornography, that was very hard for you to respect me and submit to me. The other thing I would share is that sometimes ⁓ when you don’t do things the way that I would do them or…

the way I want you to do them. Yeah, going back to that, me, trusting me to need it. Yeah, yeah. But just in a lot of different ways, I feel like it creeps up and it tempts me to want to be disrespectful in my responses to you about certain things. But I’ve worked through that, working through that. What is one thing that makes it hard for you to love me? No, we can skip this one. Yeah, no. Well, this is a, again, we’re…

answering these questions, not because these are excuses to not respect or love, you know how going back to that stumbling block thing, you know how you tell kids like you have to be able to define that word without using that word. Yeah. You have to answer this without saying anything about me. I’m just kidding. Okay. So personally, I struggle and we’ve talked about this a thousand times on this podcast. I struggle with high emotional things, like high emotions, not just in you, but in general with my kids, with real life, like normal people in my life.

I struggle with emotions, something I’m actively putting through and desiring to work on. So when you’re in highly emotional state, it’s really hard for me to ⁓ not have a gut reaction to it, which is usually not loving my gut reaction of like, ugh, can you not do that? ⁓ And so my own personal struggle with emotions ⁓ and also… ⁓

when I feel disrespected, talk down to or belittled, which usually comes when you feel emotional. And so that’s not only do I have a hard time with the emotion side of it, then I have a hard time with the response I get because you are experiencing those emotion stuff. Again, not an excuse, but those are definitely things that make it hard for me to love you well. I know we wrote these devotionals together and now we’re doing the podcast about the devotionals, but.

Doing the series with you makes me want to like level up. Level up. Level up. Let’s do more. 10x your marriage. It’s true. Next podcast. 10x marriage. Next series. 2026. Oh, there you go. We should do that actually. Okay. Well, we got to learn it first. We’re at like 2x right now. Let’s do this. All I’m saying is that I’ve been encouraged, especially through the discussion part of this, to really consider where are we and how can I do better? So hopefully you guys feel that too.

All right, we’re going to give you the call to action. Consider all of the details God put into making you, you. Write down five unique things about yourself and thank God for those specific details. And then spend time with your spouse, sharing your notes and ⁓ also give each other one reason why you respect and love each other. That’s good. Husbands, your challenge. Pursue your wife this week by inviting her to take a walk in nature or to sit quietly and do talk.

and talk about God’s design for each other, talk about those differences. This is a very intimate relational, emotional thing that you could do. I’ll show your wife that you love her and want to hear her and want to know her heart. All right, you want to close this out with Craig? Yeah, Lord, we love you and we thank you for the incredible design of marriage, Father God, that you have made us unique and different, ⁓ but equal in ⁓ value.

Lord, that you use our uniqueness and our differences to make us a strong couple, to strengthen us, that because of the way you designed my wife and the way you designed me and the way you designed women and men in general, that our marriages can be unique, powerful agents for growing your kingdom, I just pray that we would celebrate the differences and that we would look for the strength that we have in them, Father God, that we would not shy away from

understanding your design for our marriages, Father God. I pray that we would yield our hearts to your design, Father, that husbands would recognize how much love and care and nurturing their wife needs, and that wives would recognize how much respect and honor their husbands need. And that, by doing so, we would be lights in this world and examples of the gospel, pointing people to Jesus. That when people see our marriages, they would ask,

what’s different, why is your marriage the way it is? And we can say, well, it’s because of Jesus. And so we just thank you for this beautiful design that you gave us, this symbol that we get to live out every day. And we love you and we thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right, we love you. Thank you for joining us on week two. Congratulations. You’re moving through this devotional with us. We got 28 more weeks to go. And so…

We just pray that you will be blessed by this. Do those challenges that we got for you this week. Consider these questions together and ⁓ just continue to pursue God together.