This truth can change the course of your life

Hey, we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith, your hosts of the Marriage After God podcast.

And in today’s episode we’re going to talk about how words have the power to direct our lives.

But before we get into that, if this is your first time listening or watching now because we’re on YouTube, again, we want to say Welcome, welcome, and thank you for listening. And if you’ve been a long time listener, we’re super thankful that you’re part of this community. Our goal is to help cultivate extraordinary marriages. And so that’s why we have this podcast. So we want to invite you to please subscribe on YouTube or on iTunes or Spotify, wherever you like to listen or watch. We want to invite you to subscribe. And then lastly, if you haven’t done so yet, at the end of this video or end of listening to this, would you leave us a comment on the video? And if you’re on iTunes, would you leave us a review? Those reviews and star ratings help people find the podcast. It’s the way the algorithms work. It’s the way Apple iTunes works. The more reviews we get, the more listens and downloads we get, the more people will find the episodes. So we just want to invite you to do that. Yeah, that’s my intro for

Thank you, Erin, our stuff. Again, just welcome back everybody. We’re so excited to be here since relaunching this new year after every episode, Aaron and I keep saying we got to cut it down. They’re too long. We got to make ’em a little bit shorter, some long episodes. So we’re going to try, try and cut this one just a little bit shorter than the others, but we’ll see how it goes.

Keep it closer to 40 minutes, maybe not an hour.

So we’d like to start the beginning off with just a little bit of what’s going on in life, what’s going down with the Smith family

And what is going down with Smith

Family? Well, something that I wanted to share is that, and I don’t think that I’ve shared it yet, correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think so, but I asked our kids, there was an orchestra, a children’s orchestra starting up through one of our homeschool channels. And I asked the kids, is anybody interested? And all’s been wanting to play violin for three or four years, and all my kids have been our kids. I’ve been in piano. All of your kids, not mine. All of my kids have been in piano. I fought for it just because I want them to have the experience of music. And I told her later on down the road, after you do piano for a while, I’m sure you could do violin. Well, then this opportunity came up. And it’s so funny because it lined up with something that I had already decided to start in the new year, which is, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Jody Maccabee, but she has a music study. I didn’t know this. She’s just a homeschool mom who puts curriculum out there. She’s really influencer. You guys should definitely go check her out. It’s Jody. But she partnered with one of our friends on this music study. Her, I didn’t know that. Her name’s Natalie Larson, and she’s actually the one that’s putting on this children’s orchestra. That’s really cool. So not only did I go through the music study with the kids, but at the same time we got to sign up for this orchestra, which Olive’s been doing, and she’ll continue to,

I know she comes home and practices getting

Her, it’s so great

Violin skills down.

So after a couple of months they’ll do a recital, and it’s just been amazing to see the growth. It’s been so quick, and maybe she was in piano already that she picked it up pretty quickly, but one of the other moms took a video of the kids playing all in unison, and it was so cute. It was

So cute. She was liking it a lot. She was in the car. We were driving to Juujitsu the other day. She’s like, dad, I want to make music when I get older and upload it. Because we we’re always talking about business ideas. And I was like, well, if you want to do music, you better practice every day does. And I said, the better you get at piano, the better you’re going to be at every other instrument and music. And so I was like, you just got to be practicing. Take advantage of all the opportunities you have. If you want to be a musician, you got to be good music.

So I love sharing that with you guys because I just want to advocate for music. Music and allowing our children to

Explore it. Well, you did violin a little bit when

You were I did a little girl. Yeah, I was like 12 or 13. And then

A few years ago you’re like, I want to get back into violin. So I bought you a violin. And is that the violin she’s using?

That’s a full body. She’s using a

Smaller, oh, we’ve got a

Smaller one. Yeah. But I also just want to plug our friend’s music study. I just went through it with the kids and it was really great. So if you’re a homeschool mom, or even if your kids are in school, you could do this as a supplement. But it was just really fun to dive into it. Natalie did a really great job working with Jody on it, so I’m happy. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Okay, so we’re talking words again, but we’re talking about the impact that those words have on the course of our life. And we’ve been going over the last handful of episodes talking about the importance of ’em, the power of ’em, the spiritual nature of words.

Several times in the last few episodes you’ve mentioned, Hey, and we’re going to be sharing in some other episodes, and you’ve quoted how Words Direct Our Lives, and I was just curious if you want to share, is this an important part of the series for you?

Yeah, well, I would say this is the most important part. The thing I feel like I lacked in the last few episodes is it’s like, okay, it’s cool. What does that mean? Words are spiritual, words are powerful. What does that mean and how does that apply? And just talking about how the words that we hear and then also receive direct our lives. And so talking about it in this episode, this is showing like, oh, they do direct our lives. And so we’re going to talk about later on words that the world has and then words that God have and which one are we listening to? And so what’s this episode brought to us

By, well, by the most important words, the living word, the Bible. We’ll be sharing quite a few verses in today’s episode. And I think that also lends to why you said it’s the most important episode or part of the series because we are going to be sharing

The word,

The word, and the most important words that we could ever come across that to direct our lives. So if you guys want, if you’re listening and you want to have a source of taking notes, get ready because think, yeah, get

A journal, have the

Bible open. These will be the kind of verses that you’ll want to scratch down and make sure that you go back to and kind of meditate on.

So we’re going to start in Proverbs chapter one, because Proverbs is like the book of wisdom, and it says something pretty awesome. It says on verse one, the Proverbs of Solomon is the son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing in righteousness, justice, justice and equity to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning. And the one who understands, obtain guidance to understand a proverb and is saying the words of the wise to their riddles. This is the encouragement that the author is giving to not just their son or to whoever is listening, which is us, but this is God’s encouragement to the church that we want to be prepared and given seek wisdom and instruction.

And if we simplify all of this, he’s saying, listen to these words because they will guide you, which is what this episode’s about.

That’s exactly what this is about. And there’s two key words in this scripture that I want to point out. And the two words are to know and to receive, because those two things, they are not always connected because we can know many things and

Not, I was going to say, it’s by choice usually

And not receive them. Yeah. Everything we’ve been talking about in the power of words is that we’ve been talking about how words are powerful and they’re spiritual, but we don’t want you to get confused to think that words in themselves can do something to you or through you without something happening first. And those words need to be received and believed before they have any power in our life. And there’s a good example of this. I had a Bible teacher back in college who was not a believer, but he knew the Bible inside and out. So he had knowledge of the Bible. He understood what the Bible was saying, but

No implementation,

But it was not received in his heart. And so that’s the case with all messages, all words. It’s why we’re told to test them. It’s why, like we talked about in last episode, because you can hear something, you will hear something, and you need to know whether it’s true or false. So you need to have knowledge of what that is you’re hearing. But then also there’s a decision that has to be made of, are you going to receive it? Are you going to believe that? So in order for words to have power in our lives, it requires not just hearing, but receiving. And so that’s the part that is so important in this whole series. This is why I was talking about how this is what guides our life. It’s because it’s not just the things that we’ve heard. It’s not just the messages that have been told to us, the words that have been poured over us over our life. They’re the ones that we’ve received, the ones that we’ve let sink deep into our hearts,

The ones that we let change us,

The ones that we let change us. That is exactly right. So we can hear things over and over again, but never believe them. And then sometimes there’s something that we can hear one time, and it’s like we received it. We’re like, oh. And sometimes it’s the really hurtful things that we’ve heard. Someone says something really mean you’re never going to amount to anything, and then you only heard of that one time, and it just came from the right person at the right moment, at the right

Age. Why do you think that there’s certain things that just stick like that?

Probably, I don’t know. I don’t know why there are certain things that we just

Receive like that. I don’t, there’s some words, like you said, that we hear often, but we never receive. And I feel like maybe it’s because we’ve heard them often that we, they’re easier to slough off, but then the one time we hear something that you’re like, whoa, it stops you and makes you think about it. Maybe that’s what makes it sticky.

A thought that I just had you asked this question is we probably receive things easier that we’re prone to receive.

We’re ready to,

Yeah. We talked about this, I don’t know how many episodes ago when we talked about the soil of our children’s hearts. Oh, and prepping it and prepping that soil because it isn’t just like, oh, that soil’s hard. It was just always hard. Well, no, it’s hard because it’s been trampled on. It’s hard because, and so I think there’s probably something in us naturally, there’s words that we hear you shouldn’t overeat. Okay, that’s true. And everyone knows that’s true, but we don’t believe that because we might have a desire to eat. And so like, oh, I’m not going to receive that. That’s not true for me. That’s true for someone else.

Or when we see how much food is acceptable on a plate. And so it’s hard to measure, well, what is even overeating

Without measuring, we have propensities towards like, oh, that justification is easy for me to believe, but this other thing’s hard for me to believe based off of where we’re at. And so that’s probably why we need the help of the Holy Spirit in our life to help us receive things, to help us hear things. And then also, it’s probably why God allows us to go through things to help us get things quieted down. We go through, and we’ve talked about this in past episodes, we go through something hard and it gets our attention. It’s like, are you ready to listen now?

Well, it’s like when you are working with a piece of furniture and you have to sand it before you prime it in order.

It’s got to be prepped. It’s got to

Be

Prepped to receive that primer or receive that oil. So that’s probably, I don’t know, but our hearts are prepared beforehand to, it’s a good perspective. See something. And so we got to be careful how we’re preparing our hearts maybe, or with our children. Be careful how we’re prepping our children’s hearts to receive things. That was a good question. Thanks. Okay. Lemme try to get back on here. Where am I at?

I think you were going to read this verse in James.

Yeah. Okay. This is why Jesus tells us this in James chapter one, starting in verse 21 through 25. Therefore, put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness. The implanted word which is able to save your souls, but be doers of the word and not here is only deceiving yourselves. For F, anyone is a hero of the word and not a doer. He’s like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror for he looks at himself and goes away and it once forgets what he looks like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres being no here, who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. This is specifically saying, don’t just be the one who hears things. Don’t just hear the words that God gives. Don’t just hear this wisdom and then move on like, oh, that’s great. Okay, cool. I listened to it today. I read my word today and then just has no effect in your life. It does nothing. And then he says, but be doers. And what he’s saying, it says, receive with meekness, receive like, I need it. I am recognizing I need this, the implanted word. So it’s saying, don’t just hear the word, but let it come inside of you so that it directs your life.

When I thought about the word implanted, I was thinking about how you can propagate and take a piece of a plant and put it in soil and it continues to grow roots. Yeah. We tried doing this experiment in our laundry room with a couple of buckets of I was going to do herbs, but the mixture that I used, yeah, the mixture that I used just wasn’t, it didn’t have enough nutrients in it. I used some cocoa core, a filler. There wasn’t enough dirt with the, yeah, there wasn’t enough soil and enough nutrients in there to really keep and maintain the plants alive. They grew for a little bit. And then I think something was off with the lighting too. But anyways, we’re

Trying to figure it out.

We’re trying to figure it out. But when I think about something being implanted or propagated, you need that continual nutrients in order to keep it alive. And I think sometimes we’ll read scripture or we hear a good sermon, or we hear something that’s impactful and we go, yes, but we don’t continually feed that in a way that is spiritual and sticking in the word of God, that it ends up withering away or it doesn’t stick.

And it happens in every moment, moment by moment of the day. We hear, we’ve been going through the kids morning Bible time through some scriptures, and one of them is putting on compassion and gentleness and humility and patience. Put that on. And I told the kids, I was like, if it was natural, we wouldn’t have to put it on. It would just be on us, but we have to put it on clothes. We have to get dressed,

Make the effort. It’s a

Conscious decision to choose that. And then we get go throughout the day and it’s loud and we’re irritable and we’re frustrated and we’re tired and we’re hungry, and all these fleshly things that make that, putting that on feel difficult or impossible, but it doesn’t make it not true. We have to stop ourselves. And you’ve done this with me like Aaron, Hey, you need to chill out. Why are you seem frustrated? What’s going on? And I’m like, you’re right. I’m not being in a good mood. And then I have to actually repent, turn. I have to change my mind from I was going this way in my flesh and I’m like, oh, I got to do this. This is the right way because I believe that word, and I don’t disagree with it just because my circumstances aren’t fitting with it,

Or your emotions

Don’t, or my emotions aren’t lining up with it because that’s usually the case. I have to go back to it. And so like you said, that implanting, you got to let it come in, not just hear it and it bounce off your brain. It’s got to come in and then down into your heart where your will actually changes to match what it says. So

Yeah, you say here, the moment we truly believe something is when that thing begins to have power in our life.

That’s true. The moment we believe something is the moment it has power in our life. I brought this up years ago when I finally decided to start getting to shape. It’s because I heard a word. And actually there was a moment in the morning when I was like, I’m going to believe that I need to get up and go do this, because otherwise I’m never going to get up and go do this. And it’s been that way. There’s a lot of things. There’s a lot of things in our lives where we are walking one direction, we have a way of being, and someone comes to us and says, Hey, why are you doing that? Look what the scripture says. Or Look, here’s a warning for you. And you can either be like, well, thanks, thank you. I appreciate your opinion, but I’m going to leave it at that.

(17:21)
It’s your opinion. And you turn around and you walk away. You didn’t receive anything. You heard it maybe, maybe you considered it. Usually we don’t though. If we hear something, we don’t, we don’t even give it a consideration. But as believers, we should be more. It says, be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to anger. So we should be quicker to listen and then evaluate, take that thing we’re listening to saying, oh, how’s that line up? Oh, that does line up. God does want me to be more, oh, God does want me to be so reminded. God does want me to walk in the spirit. What they’re saying matches with what I should be doing. And so I’m going to receive that and actually change.

That’s good. If you guys are watching through YouTube, you might’ve seen marriage after God sitting in front of me. There’s a couple of spots that I wanted to read from, but you have a note on here first. Do you want to read that?

Yeah, I want to read this one. So there’s a quote I wrote in here because we talked about in the beginning of marriage after God and early on in the book about the power of being men and women, husband and wife, who are in the word of God and letting the word of God change us. And I have this quote, it says, I’ll just show you it. It says all this reading, meditating and memorizing. The word of God means absolutely nothing if it does not equate to a change in your life and behavior. And that’s the truth. What does it matter if we’re reading all the time, but what we’re reading has no effect in our life. We read something like the Bible tells us that we are freed from the bonds of sin and death, and yet we walk away and we feel totally bondage to sin and afraid of dying, and we’re not believing what it says.

We were just having a conversation last night in bed about this, about how our example to our children matters and how if we don’t believe what the word says or if we’re not changed by it, what example are we giving them to walk in that same power? They won’t see it.

It’s that old adage of Do what I say, not what I do. We live one way, but then tell the kids believe this. And they’re like, well, you don’t even believe that. Why would I do that? You don’t believe

It. Which they don’t really question as little kids, but I would assume as they get older and their reasoning sharpens, they would see the discrepancy.

But even if they don’t acknowledge it consciously, their subc learning,

Taking notes,

Because they learn more from our behavior than they do from our words. Now they do receive words, and they do also not receive words. So that’s a part of it. But they see our words in action and they learn from that. That’s a good reminder. So

What experience do we have with words directing our lives? We’ll just start there.

A

Personal experience.

I’ll give an example for my own self, and it’s happening this week. There’s been several areas. It’s been happening in the last couple of weeks, but there’s been several areas of my life, work, juujitsu, parenting, friendships where I don’t feel like a winner. And I keep hearing, I should just quit. I should just give up. I feel like a failure. This is not, I’m not doing well. That’s what I feel like. And it’s not actually true. You don’t believe it? Well, this is where I’m constantly having the struggle of, I don’t want to believe that, but I feel like it’s true.

So you’re at the stop sign and you got to figure out if you’re going right or left. Yeah.

And of course there’s things in my life that I have no control over that I look at that help me, that encourage me to think this way and feel this way. Jiujitsu is one of them. All week I go in and I get beat up, and of course I’m choosing to. So it’s not involuntary.

And anyone else that does, juujitsu will tell you that’s normal. You’re supposed to just show up.

And that’s what they were doing. I am saying, man, I feel like I’m just not doing good. And in my mind, I’m like, I just don’t want to do this anymore. I’m not good at this, this, it’s too hard. I feel like I’m not getting better, which may be true in these one or two days,

But over the period of

Time, yeah, it’s not true in the length of what I’ve been doing. But that’s just one example of I’m hearing these words and I’m like, am I going to believe those? Because if I did believe ’em, what would I do? Quit. I would quit. And every morning, so this morning I woke up at five o’clock and I’m laying in bed, I hit snooze, and I’m like, I don’t want to get up. It’s not even worth it. I’m tired. My body hurts. I don’t want to go. And so if I believed that I would’ve literally stayed in bed and I would’ve, my buddy would’ve not picked me up. I would’ve been like, I’m not going. He was going to pick me up. And I went. And what’s funny is I get there and every single person before I ever said anything, I didn’t even want to get up this morning. I’m not kidding. And they’re like, I didn’t want to get up this morning, man, I’m so sore. And everyone was thinking and feeling the exact same thing. And I’m like, Hey, but we’re all here. We didn’t. I was like, how did we get here?

We didn’t believe it. I want to encourage you to, because even after you got home, I could tell you were looking a little defeated, and I asked you how your time was. I felt

Really defeated.

But Elliot had a question about some move, and you were so quick to jump down on the floor and show him,

Showing him some stuff

And the way that you were teaching him and engaging with him was beautiful and encouraging to know that even when we feel like we’re not the best at something or we feel like we have that struggle of, do I quit or do I keep going? We can still find passion in the pursuit and show our kids how to do something that’s really hard, even still

Well, and to continue on, even though you feel like quitting is just a huge thing, it’s teaching your flesh. Well, I’m going to do the opposite of what you feel right now, because what you feel right now isn’t truth. And juujitsu is not the only thing. That was just one perfect example of feeling that in my life. But words in many ways have affected our life.

I mean,

We have lots of words written down.

We have lots of words that we’ve put in books, and it’s actually been a dream of mine. I feel like ever since I was little, words have always been a way that I cope. I like the written word because I can edit it and I can sit down and really think about what each sentence is going to be. And I just prefer that.

I just want to encourage you, and I want all the listeners know what she’s doing right now is not easy for her. It is not comfortable. She gets out of her comfort zone in a huge way to do this podcast, especially on video.

I just think that sometimes I get lost in my head when I’m trying to communicate live. And so I feel like the thing that I said isn’t really how I meant to say it. And so I struggle with that a lot. That’s one of my questions for later is how do you, okay, we’ll get to that question in a little bit, but let me finish flushing this out. So yes, we get to use words through our books and through podcasting. I feel like that directs our life majorly because there’s a lot of weight to our words. There’s just a lot that goes on in the content and the teaching and the message that we’re sharing.

Well, I was just reading through our book again and scanning some of the pages, and I was thinking, man, do we believe all these things

Still? Yeah. Well, I was going to say to talking about guiding

What our life looks like still

In speaking about guiding your life or directing your life. Yeah. Do we believe the things that we’ve written about and are we living according to them? Are we still maintaining that same direction? And I think that we are, and I think that it’s really cool to see how we can do this over a long period of time. And it’s been a gift. And in thinking about this, it drew me back to high school. I used to get caught doing poetry on the backsides of my math worksheets or whatever. Other

Kids were ditching class, Jennifer’s writing poetry in her class, and that’s what she gets in trouble for.

So I had this one teacher, and it was like a college prep course where she would help encourage you in different aspects of filling it out, applications or scholarships. But it also, when there was free time, she would help us with different areas that we were struggling with. And so I was supposed to be working on math, and I remember one day she came and flipped my math page back over to the right side because I had been writing poetry or I don’t know what I was writing. And she said very, it was sweet. So I don’t want to misquote her or anything. This was a long time ago, but she just said, you could dedicate your first book to me. I’m going to get you through college. And it was this, get back on task, get back on task. She said that I’m going to keep you on track. And it was a very loving thing for her to do. And I know this because I have to do it with my own kids. And homeschool is, Hey, put your eyes to your paper because you need to stay on track. I just realized, I just understood that because my daughter, that’s really funny

Because she’s just like you. I’m

Going to have to have a lot more grace with them. But that really talk about sticky. That stuck with me. The fact that she said, you can dedicate your first book to me because there was a level of belief that she knew I could be something great, and she just wanted me to make sure that I got the basics done first. And so when we came out with the first book, the Unveiled Wife, I didn’t put it as a dedication, but I did put it in the acknowledgements. I acknowledged her and just the words that she said to me and that there was, did she know

That? Did you ever reach out to her and tell

Her? I tried finding her through social media, but I never could. So if for some

Reason, if

You’re listening, you’re listening to this. Yeah. Very, very inspirational for me to, words to live up to. And that was awesome. They directed my life. I felt challenged by it. I wanted to do that. Do you

Remember I gave you a journal

For one of your birthdays

Before we were dating, wasn’t it?

Yeah, I was going to share that, and I totally forgot, but that came to my mind. You

Still have that journal somewhere.

It was before we were dating. I was turning 18 and we were at church. And Aaron, you came up to me with a random gift and we were just friends. And I remember opening up and your birthday, it was a green journal with the Empire State Building on it. I think I did a YouTube video about this or some you might have. Yeah, real or something. Oh, you did? Yeah, I shared about it somewhere.

It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s relevant.

And inside you just wrote these really, really impactful words to me about what you saw in me and that my words meant something, and I really appreciated that. And I held that dear. I still have it. So yeah, really cool.

I want to give one more example that it literally just came to my mind and I was thinking about, so we were missionaries for a little bit, and this was actually before you went. It was the first time I went to Africa and I was there for,

I think it was like six weeks.

Yeah, it was a while

Because I was going to try and fly out to with your team, you and your team, and I couldn’t.

So I’m there, and our team, we would get in these huge trucks and we drive to the middle of nowhere in Africa, and we would preach to a village and we’d hang out with them and play with the kids and do all sorts of things. And then we’d drive to another village. And so we would have to set up camp and we’d have to fix things on the truck. And there was all sorts of work to do other than preaching the gospel. And I remember, so I was there doing video. I was taking photos and doing video for this organization. And so I remember I was behind the truck once and I heard one of the guys talking about me, talking about how lazy I was and how I never helped. And how I remember hearing that. I’m thinking, whoa, that’s how he thinks of me. And then it hurt me. But at the same time, it caused me to evaluate, am I using what I’m supposed to be doing as escape an excuse escape to get out of these other hard things? And it has stuck with me forever. And so now I try my hardest when we go camping, when we go do anything that requires helping, I try and go do things so that I’m not that lazy guy that he saw.

I love that. That pushed you in the right direction though, to evaluate your own life and make sure that you could have just let it hurt you.

Well, and he probably could have did it a nicer way,

But not do it behind your back.

I don’t hold it against him. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I’ve seen that motivation in you, even just with friends who are moving and need the extra hand or Yeah.

Well, it’s pretty much been with me for what, 15? 20? No, 20. Oh my gosh.

It’s been a long time. It’s

Been a long time.

Okay. Well, the reason that I brought marriage after God today is because I wanted to read a portion of it. That really means a lot to me because it means a lot to our marriage, and that’s why we put it in the book. But it’s about dreaming together. And I know that we’ve brought this up before you guys, but it’s such an important aspect of marriage to be able to have conversations with each other and talk about what’s in our hearts, talk about what’s our hopes, our dreams, our desires, and communicate about them because there’s unity there. There’s this, don’t you feel like we’re together in this? Whenever we

Do it, when you make the dreams and the plans together, it’s like, oh, this is our goal, not my goal. Not your goal. It’s ours.

It’s ours. And so it unifies the marriage. But the reason that I wanted to bring it up, because we’re talking about words, is anytime that Erin and I have had a dreaming session and we write it down, whether it’s been on the back of a receipt or a napkin or an email to each other, we find that there’s way more success in achieving that goal or reaching that dream versus just when it comes out of here, sharing

About it comes onto a paper.

Or if it’s just stuck in our heart or our head, it doesn’t really go anywhere. But the moment we say it, the moment we write it down, those words mean something and they hold us accountable and then we can hold each other accountable. So there’s just a couple of sections in here that I wanted to read to you. This is on page 180 7. Dreaming together as a couple has been an incredible experience. We both recognize the value in sharing our hearts with one another, being vulnerable and sharing how God might be working in us and in our marriage. We believe important things bubble up to the surface when a husband and wife purpose to dream together talking and dreaming together as an opportunity to intimately communicate and connect. So the next step in your marriage journey is to dream together about how God might be inviting you to work as a team to fulfill his purposes.

(31:32)
And so then we go into a few as a team. I know there’s a few personal things in there that we share, but then continuing on page 180 9, it says, this time that we spend dreaming together as a unifying experience, communicating our current circumstances, progress and desires to each other is an intimate experience. As we expose what is going on inside our hearts, it also helps us to get on the same page as we look forward to the coming year and what our parts will be. In the grand scheme of God’s endeavors, dreaming together is an exercise that is important for every marriage after God to participate in setting goals and casting a vision for the future strengthens the bond between a husband and wife, stirring up hope for what may come. So I just, you’re a

Good reader.

Oh, thank you. I could keep going on. It’s a really great chapter. It’s chapter 13 in Marriage after God. The subtitle is Chasing Boldly After God’s Purpose for Your Life Together. And I wanted to reiterate and share this because again, just sharing the desires and the hopes that you have in your marriage with your spouse is a really, really beautiful way of your words directing your path and where you’re headed.

We talked about, I dunno if it was last episode or the one before about getting on the same page, having the same words in your, I think it was the second episode of this series. This is how you do it. Here’s dreams I have, here’s dreams you have. Where do we overlap? What needs to change? How can we align and having the same vision for your life together. And then most importantly, having God organize all that, here’s our stuff God. And God’s like, well, not that. Not that that’s good. Let’s make it like this. And totally letting him direct that. Speaking of that, Jennifer and I, going back to when we were missionaries, both of us, we lived up in Canada for a little bit with some mission, with a missionary couple, helping start an organization. We were real young, we had no kids, but I had a little bit of debt and it was making it very hard for us to keep doing what we were doing and we’re like, we want to keep doing stuff for God. And we individually both felt that we should go back home and get out of debt. And then we came together and it’s like, I think we should go back home and get out of debt. And you were like, I had the same idea. And so we heard that word of get out of debt, debt-free life so that you can do this or this for me for God. And we believed it. We literally within a week packed up our car and drove all the way from East Canada all the way back to Southern California,

Which was a beautiful drive. It was awesome drive. We did it way too fast. Looking back, I have to, we

Didn’t have any money

Back then. I have to remind myself we had no money because there’s all these stops. But it was really cool to be

Together. We were barely able to afford getting a hotel for the night at different places. So

Aaron’s like, I’m just going to keep driving. We’re

Going to

Go 18 hours. I

Drove so many hours.

So there’s probably a lot we didn’t see just because it was dark.

And so those are some examples of how words have guided our life. And we want you to evaluate the same thing. Look at your life and say, ask yourself what words, what messages have we believed that are directing us? And they might be positive or negative.

I have a negative example that I just set of, do you? Well,

It goes right into the next topic of the enemy.

I kind of don’t want to confess this. Do it

On air live.

We’ve been talking about the use of social media lately and Ooh,

I like where this is going. Yeah.

Well, just in thinking about how words direct your life on the day to day, I often hear a phrase like me time, because I have five kids and I homeschool, and so I’m with them throughout the day. That makes sense. By the end of the night, I want some me time. I want to go take a bath, I want to go sit in my bed. If I want to watch a movie or I want to scroll on Instagram or

Just want to veg your checkout,

I want to not use my brain, but even though I am, so just that motivation of hearing this is for me and it’s free time can be deceiving because I end up doing something mindless even though it contributes to something that’s not mindless. Because our conversation lately has been what are we exposing ourselves to and accepting and putting our in front of our eyes and our ears and our hearts just

Absorbing.

And so I feel like I need to redefine when I hear the words me time or looking forward to later in the afternoon when I get some free time, what actually do I want to take place and how will it benefit my life, the direction of that moment, and how will it impact me? So

Not scrolling on social media, I’m

Not committing to anything yet. I’m just saying that

Not scrolling on social media and doing something else, that’s you time like getting in the word or reading a book or talking with your husband. Yeah,

We do talk.

We do all the time, but that’s really cool. And that’s true. We have a word that we have. I deserve this. That’s a big word. And what do we think we deserve and why do we think we deserve that and where did that come from

And why does it automatically, is it defined as this thing over here and not this other thing over here?

And this gets into the idea of the enemy knows if he can get us believers to believe something other than the truth, that it’ll misdirect our lives.

Misdirect.

Misdirect,

Not direct the way we should be going.

No, because God wants us with our straight, narrow eyes up and on the straight and narrow and over and over again. Don’t look to the left or to the right, but go straight ahead.

He’s over there just nudging us off the road

And the enemy wants us to believe other things that are going to just go get us to

Swer, quit juujitsu

Or worse quit. Yeah. I don’t know if that’s the same category, but I’m kidding. Making me feel like a quitter. That’s what he wants me to feel like a loser. And I don’t want to be a loser.

Don’t be a loser.

A very famous quote by one of the most wicked men in history. I don’t know if he’s the most, but he’s definitely one of the most. This is by Adolf Hitler. I never thought I’d be using a quote from him, but he’s an expert in wickedness, so he’s got deception. He’s got a market on this. He says, tell a lie loud enough and long enough and often enough, and people will believe it. And this is why. First of all, this is true. This is true politically. It’s true spiritually. It’s true historically that if something gets preached long enough and loud enough,

Okay, but personally, you tell yourself something long enough, often enough you hear, you believe it.

You just fill in the blank with this.

I don’t want you to forget what you were going to say.

Yeah, I was going to say, I just was talking to a friend about a scripture verse that gets misused all the time, and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard it said correctly, and I want to make a point about this, which one? I know this is, you want

Your notes you’re giving me,

People will use this verse. They’ll say, God will never give you what you can’t handle.

God will give you more than

You can handle. You can handle. You’ve heard that before, right? God will never give you more than you can handle everyone listening. He is like, yeah, the Bible does say that. It does not say that anywhere. It’s actually from,

Well, we think about stories like Job and it’s like that was way more than what could. Joe couldn’t handle any of that. Yeah, he couldn’t.

You can look at any I was talking to, I brought up Job, and you bring up any story in the Bible and none of them can almost handle what they were going through except for with God. You look at Cain and Abel first murderer, and God comes to him and gives him his punishment that he’s going to be exiled and all this, and he’s like, this is more than I can bear. And God’s like, I’ll mark you and protect you. It was more than can bear. Anyways. I just want to get back to this has been said so many times that it’s now believed to be what the Bible says.

Do people ever reference it as a scripture?

They do. The only place it’s found is in one Corinthians when it talks about God giving us a wave of escape from temptations. But before it says that, it says, God will never allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear, which totally changes because everyone believes that temptation is stronger than us and we’re going to fall for it. But then at the same time, we’ll take that verse misrepresented and say, God will never give you what you can’t handle. That is

So interesting.

The scripture is God will never allow you to be tempted beyond what you can bear.

Meaning you can choose to not sin.

You could choose not fall for that temptation, which is the very next scripture that He says with every temptation, he’ll give you a wave of escape. Doesn’t mean that we won’t allow ourselves to be tempted beyond what we could bear. We do that all the time as sinners. So you tell a lie loud enough, long enough people will believe it. And that goes with scripture. You take scripture out of context. You rearrange it to say what you want it to say, and you say it loud enough, long enough. But that goes with anything like you were saying. What are the phrases? What are the words? What are the messages that we have in our hearts and that we’ve believed you have anything add to

That? It was really good. I’m just going to read this note that you have here. The power of the lie comes when people believe it. The power of the words is when those words are received, adopted, and owned, just like we were talking about earlier when you said to know and to receive. There’s power in receiving even the wrong words, that those words then will direct your life. And that’s what you’re talking about here.

And it happens many times, like you said me time, we have words that we use, that they have their own definition and they direct how we behave, how we act, how we think, how we respond. But again, the power only comes from that message, those words, when they’re received and owned. I believe what you said, I believe what I heard.

Well, this is really important in considering I shared what we expose ourselves to, what messages we’re listening, what friends are speaking to us and how they’re speaking to us.

It’s why the word warns us against, it says bad company Crips, good morals. When you’re around certain people and they all speak a certain way and act a certain way, that’s going to affect us always. Yep.

Well, you did share at the beginning of this episode that we were going to share some scripture and that you kind of broke it down into what the world says versus what God says. So let’s get into that, which I like that you’re carrying on the contrast from the beginning.

So there’s a message that the world has for us. When I say world collective, it’s collective of what you said. There could be wrong people. This is anywhere the message is coming from. That’s not of God. And so the world will say things like, be like that person you follow. Have what they have. Seek to be accepted by others. Become what the world says is good and acceptable. That social media nonstop. I mean, even the good things you see on social media are a constant draw of your life doesn’t look like this. It doesn’t mean that those people are intentionally doing that, but the enemy is going to use that. Our flesh is going to see that and interpret that.

What does God say? What God say? God says in Romans 12. Two, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect, which sharing these two close together, this makes me think, how often are we testing and discerning what we’re seeing when we’re scrolling so quickly through social media?

Yeah, we’re not or watching tv, we’re just by osmosis absorbing it.

But this is not to be conformed by this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. So yeah, I’m going to have to change up my free time in the afternoon. Well, I

Think we all do. I think all of our listeners might have already stopped listening. They’re like, no, no,

It’s so hard for so long. I would tell Erin, it’s not even that bad. I don’t do it that often. And I do justify.

Okay, I don’t know. Did we talk about this in front of the kids or not? I don’t know. Because all of a

Sudden, yes, we had a conversation at a friend’s house the other night at dinner. They listen to everything. They listen to everything. Because the following day, olive brought up to me, she came up a lot in this episode. She came up to me and was like, mom, I thought you and dad talked about not being on social media anymore.

You were on Instagram just now.

I know. I was actually looking for something very specific to share with Elliot.

They call us out all the time.

I do love it though. I appreciate it. Okay, moving on. Yeah.

What does the world say?

The world says, worry about the future. You need to have more to be more secure for tomorrow.

Yeah. There’s this constant draw. You just watch any news. You listen to any podcast. We’re specifically in the political zone. This year is an election year. Everything fills apocalyptic. Even as a believer, we look at the world and we’re like, oh, the Lord is returning soon. But the world wants us to have this fear and anxiousness worry and like, oh, I’m not prepared enough. I haven’t got my 401k in order. I haven’t got my don’t have prepper kit. What does God say? Matthew 6 34, therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. God’s like, don’t worry about tomorrow. You got enough to worry about right now. And how often do we forget about the right now? What’s important in this moment right now? You my kids, my friend who called me and needs my help. That’s it right now. And so the world has one message that we can listen to and we can receive and believe it, which is going to, if you think this way, I know people, they become preppers. I’m not against prepping. I love that idea. We do it in some form or fashion, but if that’s what we believe, then we’re going to be filled with anxiety and fear and oh, I haven’t prepped

Enough, not able to really enjoy even the process of prepping and what it means.

So I’m not trying to point anyone out unless you’re being convicted of the Holy Spirit, then you could be convicted. What does the world say?

Follow these influencers and subscribe to the We did ask them to subscribe.

Subscribe to my channel,

Follow these influencers and subscribe to these programs and take these E-course. Read these books and listen to these podcasts.

Doesn’t that feel

Exhausted? We gain wisdom for today.

I’m

Not. We’re guilty. We

Are. We’re trying to provide something here, but what the world wants us to do is feel like we don’t have enough of it. To be honest, if you turned our podcast off and never listened to it again, but you opened the word of God and believed what it said, you’d be okay, we won. This is what our goal is. But I get anxiety about this all the time. I follow Manly podcasts and other influencers that are very successful. I like to glean some things, but at some point I’m like, I can’t do all this. They’re like, you need to read 365 books a year. And I’m like, I might be able to read one book this year.

I was talking with a girlfriend about this, because when you are following a bunch of different people online, you start to gain this perspective that everyone’s kind of like this. And when I say this, the desire that you want to be a certain type of person when this person over here probably specializes in one. Okay, I’m just going to list some girly things. So like sourdough bread making, I know this other one is all crunchy things. This other one specializes in being a really awesome homeschool mom. This other one, she

Loves chickens and she’s got 87 of ’em. Sure.

And then this other one is all fashion just always put together. And so collectively, you put them all together and you’re like, this is the woman I want to be, but that woman isn’t even, it’s not possible to be everything all the time. And so then you’re left feeling like you fall short.

And same on the man side. I need to be working out this much. I need to have this much protein in my diet. I need to have read all these books.

Then we’re all sitting there going, how are all these people doing it?

Yeah. I’m like, is anyone doing this stuff? I don’t understand how this

Works. So this is what God says about what we should do, especially in an area that we want to grow in. And maybe there are several areas that we want to be growing, and that’s okay. That’s not what we’re saying. We’re just saying we need to go to the word of God and test how it is that we’re feeling up to these things. So James one five says, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given.

So where do we go for our wisdom?

Him

Social media. Oh, James. James.

Thanks

James. We go to the word of God and we actually go to God. We say, God, will you please give me wisdom on how you want me to respond to this? How do you want me to act? How do you want? What kind of woman

You want me to be? The kind of man you want me to be?

And he might encourage us. You aren’t educating yourself enough. You’re kind of just relying on what you have. Maybe that’s it. And so then you let that guide you not what everyone on social media says. Yeah.

Also, I would just like to note that this is an important conversation for spouses to have, because we’ve talked about this before where we share, oh, I feel like there’s all these expectations or how I should be. And then we are able to speak into each other’s lives and say, well, this area that you’re struggling with over here and you’re feeling a good failure, I don’t even care about that, and you shouldn’t care about that. And so let’s get that off the plate, get that off the table, and then you can really focus your attention on these other areas that you do desire to grow in that I would like to see you grow in. So we’ve done that for each other over time, and I think those conversations are really important. That kind of ties back into dreaming together.

So I think we should come to an end. I know,

But I did have that question though. Okay.

Ask that question.

Okay. What happens when, this was a very random spot to put this. I didn’t know where else to fit it. Okay. Okay. What happens when we say things we don’t mean or say something in a weird way? I often struggle with my words like I shared with you guys, even on this podcast. Sometimes I say things and I’m like, that’s not what I meant. When we struggle to say what we mean because words do have an impact, do even those words when we are misunderstood or misleading, they’re not meant to hurt somebody. But what if they did or they weren’t meant to sound confusing, but they were.

I think we need to remember what James says where it says, anyone who can control their tongue is perfect, man. Able to control bridle, his old body. There was only one. It was Jesus. And to be honest, we’re all going to say the wrong thing. And to be honest, we often say the wrong thing because we have so many misbeliefs in us, and it’s why we’re told to renew our minds and to meditate in the Word of God and to constantly go to it so that we’re being repaired constantly. So I would say grace. Yeah, that’s a good answer. A repentance, being willing to change. I misspoke. I said that thing and that was hurtful. And I’m sorry. Humility. Yeah,

That was a good answer. I appreciate that. Okay. One thing that I did want to share was a verse that we’ve lived by for a long time. Actually just got to share it with the kids this morning, but it’s Proverbs 16, three. It says, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established. Again, this goes back to that dreaming session where you share with your spouse expectations, desires, dreams, hopes. What do you want the future to look like? Because when we’re talking about directing your life, we’re talking about what steps you’re taking every single day together that’s going to lead you forward and closer

To God.

So when you take everything that you’re learning, the words you’re studying, whether it’s from a book, the Bible podcast you’re listening to, and you come together and you share all those things, and then you say, okay, well as a couple, this is the direction we want to go, then what? Well then you need to commit your work to the Lord. And so how we do that is we pray and we say, God, these are the things that are set before us. These are the things we want to pursue. Will you clarify that call? Will you show us and be our navigator? And we just commit these things to you and ask that you would help

Us? Which also means, Lord, if any of these plans that we have are not what you want, tell us and show us and stop them because we want what he wants and

Be able to receive that when he redirects. Yeah,

That was a good word. So as usual, we end with a prayer. But before we do that, I just want to remind you, if you haven’t subscribed yet to our channel, subscribe unless you don’t want to, that’s fine. But we’d like you to. And yeah, why don’t you pray for us? Okay.

Dear Lord, thank you so much for today’s episode, just for the reminders of your word being so important and so valuable to our lives. Thank you for Proverbs, just that gift of a book that helps us train our hearts and our minds to understand what your will is and the wisdom that you offer us in the ways that we should walk and the ways that we should go. And I just pray for every marriage, listening right now, Lord, that you would direct their steps. I pray that they would come together and just be willing to be vulnerable with each other, that they would share their hopes, their dreams, their desires, but then that they would also submit and commit their work to you. And I pray that they would come together in prayer and just be humble enough to receive from you your words and your direction and your navigation for their life. We thank you so much for the richness of your holy word, Lord. And we ask that it would be the so thing that leads us and guides us and helps us to discern what is good, what is true, and what is the way we should go. And so we thank you for these words and we just pray that we would hold them dear. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen.

Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.