When God Calls You to Unify – Interview with Mark & Christine Jewell

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That’s E-V-R-E-E, and you’ll automatically get 10% off your order. Visit marriage after god.com/every and get 10% off your order today. Welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. In this episode, I get to have a wonderful conversation with Mark and Christine Jewel. Christine Jewel is the author of a book called Drop the Armor, and they both are the founders of the Momentum Company. They work together, they’re entrepreneurs, they love the Lord. And the two topics that we got to really dig on were one that you’re going to really love is Supernatural Unity, and the other one was how they transitioned from having businesses that weren’t focused on Christ to businesses that are focused on Christ and the holistic view of helping people not just in their health and in their business, but also in their spiritual life and drawing closer to God. And so I really pray that this conversation with Mark and Christine Jewel is a blessing to you in Joy.

Hey, I’m Aaron. And I’m

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

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

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

Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast.

Welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. I’m here with Mark and Christine Jewel, and how do you guys welcome to the show.

Thanks for having us, Aaron. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Yes, we’re grateful.

Yeah, I’m super excited to have you on. I love your guys’ story and I love that we’re going to be able to dig into that. And so why don’t we start off by just going into biographies and introductions because my audience, some of ’em probably don’t know you, some probably do. So why don’t you guys start off just sharing who you are, how long have you guys been married? And you don’t have to truncate it too much. We have plenty of time to talk, so if you wanted to share who you guys are, I would love to know

Take the lead on

This. Well, my name’s Christine Jewel, we’re Mark and Christine Jewel. We have been married, we got married in 2020 in the midst of Covid. Actually we got married in December of 2020.

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So this is both of our second time around in marriage. We have gone through a couple decades each of doing it the wrong way, trying to do things the world’s way, build businesses the world’s way, do relationships, the world’s way. Only to find that whenever you try to build something on sand, it’s like a glass castle that shatters eventually. And so we got to have that experience that we feel really passionate about, talking about relationship building, thriving as a family, serving God, putting God first and doing things in God’s order, right? Because we have just witnessed such a difference in our life and the way we do business, the way we parent together. Together we have six kids through a blended family, ages eight to 23, so we have got the full gat.

That’s a big range. Everything you can ask for is happening right now. We

Got a full gamut, and we recently also just merged our business as we both have a lifetime of coaching and training under our belt of different capacities. And this past year we just really felt on our heart that it was the year God was calling us to unify everything business included. So we are just on the tail end of rebranding and relaunching our new business that we are launching called The Momentum Company. So lots of exciting things.

Mark, you got anything to add that story?

Yeah, there’s a whole great big long story to go along with it. I’ll just share a little bit of color on when we met at a Tony Robbins Business Mastery Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. We lived a thousand miles apart. Neither of us was in the state of mind necessarily that we were looking for a partner of any kind. We were there to go and blow up our businesses and continue the success that we had been having. We both had successful businesses at the time and blow up both of those businesses did indeed and completely almost implode. And so we

Got to go back, not blow up in the good way,

No, not exactly what we had in mind, not exactly what we had in mind, but through that God brought us together and a thousand miles apart, I put on a lot of miles on my pickup driving from Omaha, Nebraska to just outside Toronto and Canada where Christine lived at the time. So not only a thousand miles apart, but two different countries

During the pandemic,

During the pandemic, everything that was going on there. So it was quite an interesting, dare I say, tumultuous start to the beginning of the relationship. And there was a lot of tempering that happened within that timeframe, but I mean when you look back on it and think like, man, that really shouldn’t have worked. So you know that the Lord was us through,

Hey Kristen, you’re not, are you Canadian or were you just there for work? I’m

Not Canadian. I am American, but I lived in Canada for 21 years.

Oh wow.

That’s a long time. Canada kind of felt like a second home, but yeah, I was back in the States and coming to work on my business, didn’t want anything to do with anyone else. He was in the same boat. And it’s funny how we have our plans and we have our ideas and God has his plans and his

Ideas. Is it okay if I ask you how long between your previous marriages and then you guys meeting each other?

Yeah. Well, I got married, my previous marriage ended in 2009, so I’m five years older. I’m the oldie, I’m the wise one. No, I’m just kidding. Older, wiser. I was divorced in 2009 from my first husband. But here’s the deal. We met in 2019 and the thing is that after my first marriage, I did not heal any of this stuff that created the mess in my first marriage. And so I jumped into another long-term relationship and did another eight year cycle just repeating. We think maybe it’s better on the other side, maybe it’s just them. But we realize that everywhere we go, there we are. And so even though I had a big gap of 10 years, I was still repeating patterns and repeating patterns until I

Had

A coming to Jesus moment where I said, okay, Lord, I will be single forever unless you bring the man that you have for me into my life. Mark, not so much. I had a 10 year gap, but I was dating. You were fresh.

It was very fresh for me. The reason I had no intention is I was still just coming out of the marriage that I was in and we were in the divorce proceedings and it was over shortly, just a couple months after, a few months after Christine and I met, when Christine talks about not going through that healing process after, I feel very much like I went through mine while we were in it. I mean there was a lot of work that marriage did not end due to lack of effort, at least from I felt if I made myself into someone who was more fit and sexier than maybe she would pay more attention to me. And then that took me down a whole rabbit trail of other personal development things and being in the professional and personal development space, I had access to a lot of great things and in attempting to become who I thought she would want, and I felt like I actually went through a lot of those hurdles and really came out the other side.

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One day I looked around and the business was thriving and I felt actually at the time that my relationship with God was at an all time high. And I can say more about that at a different point in this segment, but I felt that was great and my relationship with my kids was good. I was there every day getting kids up, putting kids to bed, taking them to school, managing a lot of the day-to-Day stuff around the children while running the business and doing all the things. And I looked around and it became very apparent that there was no reciprocal effort in that relationship. And I was in certainly a very different place in my spiritual walk at that time without any faith that says, Hey, continue to wait. It felt like I had waited long enough and I made the decision to end that relationship. There’s a lot more details that I don’t think I’m legally allowed to say. Some you’re getting the light version today. Fine, that’s fine. What I am really proud of actually is who I really had to level up while I was going through some of the things that I was going through that I won’t mention.

And

When we came together, like I said, it wasn’t like I was sitting here thinking, oh, I need to go date or get on an app. None of those things ever happened. It just became

No, just took a Tony Robbins.

Tony Robbins went there and you get this in a room of 2,500 people at Business Mastery. We ended up in a small group of eight people and it was nothing wild or crazy at first. It was just a conversation and it was the easiest conversation that I had ever had really with anyone. And that has continued to this day, not that all of our conversations are easy. Of course,

We don’t need to keep digging into the past story if you guys wouldn’t like we have a lot of other stuff to talk about. But do you guys believe that or feel like a lot of the decisions and the direction and where you guys are today came out of past experience, what your recognition of what led to the divorces and where you’re at? And so what I’m asking is, is God using those past things to direct and coordinate the present things?

And what I love is that God does not waste anything. He will not waste anything. He will not waste any experience. And I do believe, as Roman says, he uses all things for good. So even if we messed up, if we didn’t get it, if our heart wasn’t in the right place, we look back sometimes and we think I could have, should have would’ve done different. If I know now, and I had the faith now and the wisdom that I have now, would the past marriage be different? Probably, but it wasn’t. And so this is what I love, is that the minute that we turn our hearts toward God and we really seek him, when we hunger for him, he starts to make things right in our life again. And so we get to use all of that wisdom. We don’t repeat the lesson and we say, God, I want to do it this, I want to do it right the next time. I want to start today and doing it right. And that’s I think, been both of our stories for sure. That’s certainly been mine. And I think just knowing the pain of what’s available on the other side when you’re not right with God and

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Then seeing what we have now, it’s just, I mean, the contrast of two worlds. And it’s not because, oh, we got divorced because lots of people get divorced and just go right back into the same marriage as before. It’s really laying everything down and just being able to forgive the past, repent of the things that we did not know, turn our hearts toward God and know that ultimately he is faithful to his promises. And I believe that he created us to have amazing marriage, amazing union. And I still believe

Amen.

Marriage is the foundation. Obviously the word of God is the foundation, but marriage is the foundation on which he starts to build everything else in our life.

I love that. And that’s kind of the thing I was trying to draw out of you guys is because not that it’s an excuse like, oh, no matter what I do, God’s going to use it. It’s more of a, we can have grace for ourselves and also understand God’s goodness because he does use the broken and the unwise and the things that hurt. And like you said, nothing wasted. We talked about that in our book. We didn’t say nothing wasted, but we just talked about how God uses all of us, our whole story, all of our experiences, all of our testimony. I believe you actually talked about it in your book, right? This is you, right? Yeah. That’s a book by the way. This is a big book, Christine, you are a writer. When I got this, I was very impressed. I was like, wow. And it’s full. So I was scanning through it today and

Bite into,

Yeah, there’s some really good stuff in there. I was scanning through it. But you talk about that in your book, the idea how God doesn’t waste anything in our lives and mainly when we surrender, like you said, and say, okay, use all of this and teach me from it. Teach me to repent of the things that I did do wrong so that we can move forward and have more health and more obedience and blessing from you, Lord. And I really loved that. So that’s awesome.

I want to share one last thing about that just because it’s so fresh. And I was recently having a conversation with someone yesterday as well about this. And often when people reach out to me about working together, it’s because I do coaching one-on-one executive coaching. And the question is often like, oh, my marriage is in shambles. We’re disconnected, we’re like roommates, should I stay? Should I go? And sometimes people are actually looking for someone to validate the decision they’re already making in their head, but regardless, one of the things I always say, and it really was something that has helped certainly me experience the relationship I have, is that there needed to be a death of the old. So whether you stay or whether you go the old marriage, the old relationship as you know it, the dynamic that you guys had, there’s going to be a death of the dynamic that you guys had so that God can birth something new through the two of you. And I just wanted to say that and encourage anyone listening that’s maybe going through a hard time. It’s like, man, it’s so bad. I don’t know how it could possibly get better. It’s like the way that you’ve been doing it, it’s going to die. But something new, God is a God of restoration and writing love stories and redemption stories. So whether you stay or go, it’s that willingness to die of the old to make room for the new.

Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I personally would always encourage someone to stay within the context of what God says, but at the same time, I agree even if they stay, it had to happen in my marriage. There has to be a moment of, well, we can’t just keep being what we are. We have to transform, we both do and to move forward and to change. And that’s exactly right. So regardless of the outcome, we have a responsibility. We can’t control the other person. That’s always true. It doesn’t feel true. But that’s the truth is you cannot control it. You can only control yourself. And at some point you have to surrender and say, okay, well, I’m going to die to myself and I’m going to follow you, Lord, wherever that leads. And so

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That’s a really good point you made, Christine, thank you. You mentioned working together. And so I think to get into the meat of what I think is so amazing about you guys and what I try and encourage our couples with and what my wife and I have been doing and what a part of our ministry is not just working in a career together, but that’s often a big part of it, but this idea of unity that we’ll get to toward the end of this episode, but it starts with first of all what you guys did for work previously. And I’d like you guys to dig into that. Mark, what were you doing before? And then we will talk about Christine, what you were doing, and then we’ll talk about that transition you guys had. So Mark, what was your background, your career, what were you doing? And we’ll lead into that.

So my background is in speaking, training, coaching in the corporate arena. So think business training, business coaching, things of that nature. And I’ve been quite, honestly speaking since I was 16 years old, I was a big

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High ranking member, I guess at one point of the Minnesota FFA, future Farmers of America. I come from an agricultural background, rural kid, farm boy, that kind of thing. And it was big time in FFA, which interestingly enough, just two days ago, crossed over a million members nationally and think that’s amazing. They turn over one class every year. So they’re replacing that, which is pretty cool. It’s also, even though with its agricultural focus, it’s actually the largest youth leadership organization in America. Wow, that’s cool. So I came up through that world and there was a really, really high standard if you were elected to an office, like a state officer or national officer or if you were to work with their national staff as a trainer. And so I went through their training, I went through their train, the trainer in my late teens, early twenties, spent years traveling the country ad hoc wherever I had time to fit it into my schedule, putting on leadership events for them.

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And I had every intention of making a career out of that. Now, youth leadership development is amazing and it’s fun and it’s rewarding, but it does not pay the bills in most cases. So you’re doing a lot of nonprofit work, you’re doing a lot of schoolwork, and it can be pretty heavy. So focused on my degree in education, went and eventually did a master’s degree in organizational leadership with a focus on change management, and actually got a job with a company selling e-learning deployments into large organizations. So I learned two things that were really important there. Number one, how to do a large scale learning deployment inside a company, number two, and probably more importantly, how to sell B2B.

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And that’s a really important part of the work that we’re doing today because we’re still, every day, I bet on two sales calls today, we’re still working in that B2B setting, which is different than a lot of coaches. A lot of coaches are one-to-one or working with maybe a specific type of person. We work with companies and then we get to work with the people inside those companies today. But the backstory is kind of how I got into that, and I was okay at the e-learning business, but there wasn’t a lot of heart in selling technical training or safety training delivered through an e-learning module.

You got to have a certain passion for that, for it to be,

Yeah. And I knew in my heart, that is not where God was calling me to spend my career, although it paid bills for a few years. In 2013, officially, I launched what was Mark Jules speaking in training. And my big dream at the time, Aaron, was to be a keynote speaker, big stages, things like that. And I was on my way, went out and started acquiring clients, doing whatever you have to do in the beginning of the business to make it. And along the way is actually when I discovered that coaching was a need within these organizations that I was doing these training and that trainings for and that I was speaking to. And so we ended up building a coaching business that to date as we’ve run over 200 live events, specifically our Thriving leader program over 140 times now. And that program has logged over 12,000 hours of employee coaching. So that is what I have been doing, and it’s still a big part of what we’re continuing to do. That all came with the current business that we can, but I’ll let Christine share a little more about her background first.

Yeah,

Yeah, that’s good. So you were in coaching and training in the corporate space,

Corporate training and coaching.

Yeah, I just believe it’s in our DNA. It’s in our DNA from the beginning, whether you’re five or 50, it’s like you were always doing it at some level. For me, I’ve been a coach as long as I can remember since I was in athletics in school, I was either coach or captain of the team. And then it just evolved. So no matter where I was starting with athletics in school in my twenties, I always was rising into some sort of coaching, training, development thing. And what happened is I developed a passion for fitness. I was in athletics, I love soccer. I ran track. I was a world-class triathlete for about a decade. And as I started training and training, I actually opened a studio up in Canada in holistic health and performance. So we had a bricks and mortar facility, and we were doing a lot of health coaching, a lot of athletic training, mindset, high performance, win races, bfi, BFAs. Here’s the thing that as I was working with all those people, I started to work with more and more executives, and as people started to come in and they were sick, they were physically sick, autoimmune diseases, inflammation, chronic fatigue, I started to realize it’s not just another diet, it’s not just another workout, but most of these people were suffering with mental, emotional, or relationship problems, right? Emotional or relational roots. And so it was just funny how God took me from coaching athletically, mindset, performance, body nutrition,

Yeah, the physical

Into this, into this space of just really working with executives on their relationships, on their heart, on their marriage, on their spirit. And I resisted it, Erin, because I was like, I don’t want to talk about faith. At that time I was like, I don’t want to talk about faith, and who am I to talk about marriage? Because look at me. I’m a failure at marriage and relationships, but the Lord uses us and it’s been so powerful, the work. So when we got together, I was already, I had the facility in Toronto, so we’ve shut that down since then. We have gone all in the us, but I had already developed an online coaching practice, and actually Mark was my number one referral source because when he started to get into these organizations, leadership affects culture. So if you have a cultural problems, you have to look up and go, what’s going on with our leadership? What’s going on with the guys at the top? And usually what was going on was disconnection, relational issues at home. People call it a midlife crisis, spiritually seeking. And so there was a synergy already happening.

It’s interesting, once you get under the hood of some of these organizations, what you find is leaders tend to invest in their teams because there’s some cracks or fractures within the team. There’s something there. And it could be something as simple as our salespeople aren’t asking for the sale and they want training on that. That’s the symptom that they’re addressing. There’s always something deeper. And the more time that I would spend with an organization or that our team would spend getting to know the leadership once they’d made an investment in their people, inevitably they would come to me and say in a private call, Hey, I’m about to get divorced for the second time. I really don’t. I don’t want to. Or I feel guilty, or I’m carrying all this shame. Do you guys have anything for that?

Right?

And like, yes, I do. I’m going to set you over the call with Christine. And so ultimately, I mean, as we went through, even as we started this year though, we did not have the intention to fully unify our businesses, but that is absolutely what manifested through the work. As we continued, that continued to happen, and then we continued to look at what does unification look like for us? So

There’s two things I want to highlight for our listeners. First, hearing your background and then hearing Christine’s background and how as we talk about in our book, all these yeses you guys had and all these experiences and your gifts and talents and how they come together, and each one of those experiences, each one of those histories, each one of those things that you guys built and were a part of knowing what we’re about to talk about with what you’re currently doing, they all, they come together ultimately and they work really well together. You use that word synergy, and we’re going to talk about unity in a little bit, but I think that’s a beautiful thing that all of those things, mark, you’re like, I was going to do this forever. I thought this was what I was going to build my career on. Not knowing that that was just going to be an aspect, a piece, a tool in your tool belt that you’re going to use for this new thing, for this future thing that you had no idea about.

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And same for you Christine. And then the other thing I wanted our listeners to consider is whether or not these husbands and wives that listen to our show have a business together. They could be working full-time jobs separately, or one could be a stay home mom or stay home dad, whatever they are doing, if they were to take a moment and to really dig in and look at who they are, the experiences they have, the resources at their fingertips, the things that they’ve done and the passions they have, that they too would find a way that God has brought them together to uniquely minister to people to serve together in his kingdom and building his kingdom and bringing those things that they are unified and that those things, when they are used together, like Mark, you said, Hey, I’m going to set you up on point with my wife because she actually specializes in this.

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This is a desire for as a passion, or she knows how to help you with this exact thing. And I firmly believe that if each one, each husband and wife were to actually take some time to just even it down, what are the tools, what are the resources? What are the experiences that we have? And what does that look like as a whole picture? And how can God use that now? And I bet you they would find really good, like you said, synergy of like, oh, this is who we are. This is the full picture of our marriage and how God can use us.

And if I may, Erin,

Yeah, go ahead.

I am going to give Christine full credit for initiating this. She’s so good with these things. But what’s really helped us to have that conversation to sit down and talk about, well, what strengths do we bring to the table? Where are our potential weaknesses? And as we’ve gone through our unification and merger and all those things, let’s not beat around the bush. There’s been some things that we’re hiding that got to come to the surface. So what’s kept us going, and this is what I would encourage people to think about wherever they’re at, is what is that north star for you and your spouse? What’s that north star for your family? Because as we sit down and we have a conversation, maybe we have to have a tough conversation about something that North Star supersedes,

Right?

Whatever we’re doing, and maybe I have to concede something, maybe I have to share something or bring something up that I don’t want to talk about or that just feels tense or whatever.

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That North Star carries more weight in the conversation than the thing that I’m holding onto because we’ve decided early on, what is that North star? We’ve had that conversation. So that has been really helpful for us to sit down and decide. I mean, first and foremost, we’re here to glorify God through everything that we do. So is this thing that I’m holding onto potentially hiding, is that glorifying God? Am I improving our ability to glorify God or am I detracting from our ability to glorify God, okay, this sucks, but let’s get it over with. Let’s rip the bandaid off and get into it because that’s what’s necessary.

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

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Our heart is to encourage you along with everyone who listens to this show, to be praying for your spouses and your marriages to be strengthened, renewed, healed, prepared, and empowered to do the ministry that God has for you to do in this world together. So Jennifer and I would love to invite you to join with thousands of other couples in taking our 31 day marriage prayer challenge. This is a completely free and fun way to build a habit of prayer in your marriage. All you have to do to join is visit marriage prayer challenge.com and fill out the registration form. Once you do that, you’ll begin to receive an email every day from us during the 31 days to not only remind you to pray for your spouse, but we’ll also give you various topics and prompts to help you know what to pray for.

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We dare your marriage to start praying like never before. Start the challenge today@marriageprayerchallenge.com. Mark what you’re saying. Just to clarify, because this is a really good bit of advice on how to align together. That North Star is what’s that thing that, what’s the direction you’re going? What’s the goal that you’re looking toward? And like you said, glorify God. How are we glorifying God with this? How does this bring him more glory? And if it doesn’t, then we need to redirect. Or if it’s not the quite right way that it needs to happen, how do we get to that? That’s what you’re saying.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

I love that it’s so easy to be like, well, this is my way and this is your way. Well, I used to do it this way in business. Well, you did it this way. Well, I parent this way and you parent that way, and it gives us that opportunity instead of looking this way to look up and go, hold on a second. What is the ultimate thing that’s bigger than both of us? And I think as believers, it’s actually really quite simple to glorify God in everything that we do. Whether we’re having a conversation in front of our kids or we are, it’s not about me or you. It is we’re vehicles and we’re vessels and we’re divinely gifted and all that. And God brought us together to do it together and we got to make sure that we keep our eye on the main thing. I

Love that. Keep your eye on the main thing. Keep your eye on the prize. Someone said that once.

Yeah. And I think a lot of people struggle with what is the main thing? What is the main thing? And it’s like we get all up in our head and we’re like, the main thing is to be a lighthouse everywhere that we go. Are we just reflecting God’s glory? Are we bringing more light to the situation? Are we bringing more clarity? Are we bringing more confusion and tenseness? Anyways, go on and on. Go ahead,

Jump. No, this is so good. No, mark and Christine, this is a great transition to my next question. So you both have your careers, you both have your direction, and like you said, at some point there was probably multiple North stars. I asked this goal in mine North, this goal in mine,

North Star. Then sometimes the North Star can change because we need more money this month. And so that becomes the north star, right? Or whatever.

So there was a point though that two things took place. It was not just the merging of your businesses into a single unified business that you guys are now doing together, but there was also a transition. I heard this kind of from both of you guys, mark on your side, that just faith wasn’t really an aspect of your business. It was business, it was agriculture, it was development, which are good things, but it was kind of sterile in the sense of faith,

Direction, direction. It’s not the kind of thing you bring up in the corporate space, right? Exactly. It was like that. It wasn’t even that I wasn’t comfortable. The thought had not even really occurred to me because I just wasn’t

There. And then Christina, on your side, a very similar situation of that wasn’t a part of your business model of encouraging people and coaching people. It was very biological. It was very physical, but then something changed and I’d like to know what was the transition? What was the Lord doing to take you from a place of we have a faith, but that has nothing to do with our business, to no, we are going to make our faith front and center. What happened? How did that transition happen? Sure. There’s a lot of couples that are wondering how they probably like you, mark. It’s not even a thought in their mind, but now it needs to be. It’s

So good. It’s so good. I love this conversation. This is something I really get excited about because look, I had all of these. We’re just going to turn our notifications off to make sure that nothing is too loud. Here’s the thing, we have all of this training. We have all degrees, master’s degrees, certifications, all this expertise you’re teaching, all the mindset stuff. You’re teaching all the human behavior, this psychology, all this stuff that the world tells you to do and you’re teaching the strategies and the tools. What happened for me, Erin, was that Jesus had been at work in my heart just restructuring everything. Like I said, I built multiple businesses successfully by the world standards, but I was always riddled with anxiety and my relationships were always stressed. And I had a tug of war between my focus on the business and my focus on the kids. And I didn’t have peace. I did not have peace. I had money and I had growth and I had business success, but internally it was like everything was always in competition. When I truly went through this season of saying Jesus, I’m just like, take the wheel. I cannot do it. By the way, I talk about this in chapter one of my book, the Perfect Storm, that moment where I was face down and I really just knew I had to hit the trifecta of my business, my body, my relationships

Burning

Down when I really gave it over to Jesus. And I said, I’m not doing this without you. I’m not doing marriage without you. I’m not doing business without you. I’m not doing health without you. I’m not doing any parenting without you. I’m not doing money without you. He started due to a thing in me. And so as I started to coach, I continued to coach and I was doing all the high performance stuff. It was like I felt like I was robbing people by only giving them the 80% and not talking about, because you can do all that stuff, all the mindset work, you can have all the strategies, but if you don’t talk about what’s happening at the spiritual level, you’re missing the glue that binds everything together. You’re missing the thing that actually brings peace into the equation. You’re missing the thing that makes multiplication happen without you carrying the load of everything.

And

So I just knew it was like, I cannot not talk about it. And plus when it’s in you and you’re embodying, it just starts coming out of you. Right? And Aaron, I want to say this. As I started to share, I noticed there was such a hunger. People wanted to know. It wasn’t like we were just talking about mindset. I’m like, I’m not going to talk about three quarters of you. I need to talk about all of you. You have a mind, you have a heart, you have emotional body, you have a spiritual body and you have a physical body. So we need to talk about all those components and the spiritual root of things that actually create the physical results. As I started to have these conversations, I mean people were starved, starved for it, and people were wanting to pray, we’re doing spiritual warfare behind the scenes. People are just grasping. And you know what? There were also people that said, you talk about God too much.

We’re

Quitting. We talk about why does everything have to be about God? And I’m like, because at the core, everything is spiritual at the root. So if I leave that out, I’m actually robbing you of the truth and you hired me to teach you or show you or mentor or guide you. And you like the fruit of what you witness here. Well, the one who creates the fruit is Jesus.

Christy, let me ask you a question. This is not one of the ones I sent you guys, but you’re talking about coaching and you were realizing in your own life I would imagine you were trying to embody the image that you were trying to coach. Would that be true? You’re like, Hey,

In the past,

Here’s what I know. In the past, in the past, here’s what I know that works and here’s but the fruit that you were experiencing in your own life, not on the inside, you were feeling like, wow, there’s something missing, something’s broken. Was there times in your coaching before fully transitioning into now how you do things that you were feeling like you were leading in that same direction? You’re like, if I’m feeling this way, how are they going to eventually feel? Was that a part of this?

You know what, not really. I think that there’s a thing called spiritual blindness. We know that there’s the void. We know that something’s missing. Maybe we feel like a little bit of an imposter. You’re carrying this weight of needing to have it all together and put it all together. And look, Aaron, I want to say even when I was married before we taught marriage courses at church, we led bible studies. We had the external facade,

(39:16)
But the foundation wasn’t solid. And internally there wasn’t oneness. There wasn’t total unification between my spirit and the spirit of God and the marriage. And so I think what happens is when you’re fragmented on the inside, I call that fragmentation. Everybody has that. We’re just divided on the inside. Division is what’s normal and we know that something’s off, but it’s almost like you don’t know how to bridge that gap because you haven’t had that experience yet. But once you do know something’s missing and you do know that you’re carrying the weight of it on your shoulders and you do know that you’re trying to hold it all together yourself, and you do know that that feels heavy and that feels like an imposter sometimes. And so sometimes it’s like, what do I do with this? And again, I keep coming back to this because it is that moment where you say, I’m not going to carry it all myself anymore. I wasn’t designed to and it was really like, I want to know. I want all of it. I believe we’re created for all of it. And so from that point, I just think what we create on the outside is what we are on the inside.

So

If we’re fragmented and divided on the inside, we have division and fragmentation on the outside. We could talk about what’s happening collectively in our nation right now, A house divided falls. And as I became really whole and unified on the inside, it just flows rivers of living water flow out of you. And it’s awesome who you are. It’s not even a cup is full, it’s just your’re overflowing with the spirit.

It just flow well. It stops being a facade.

Yeah. It’s just who you are that

You are holding together with your own strength. It becomes your identity of what you are walking in the spirit. So Mark, what was the experience like that transitioned you from all business, all exterior to No, I want my faith front and center. I want to,

Yeah, I tried all the things. I’ll be honest. I mean,

We both tried all the things, all the things.

My mid thirties, I got super involved with plant medicine and I thought, man, going to Columbia and working with the shaman and working with plant medicine answered so many questions for me. And it was like I thought this was the end all be all growing. I grew up Catholic. I was never really forced to go to church by my parents, but I did the whole kind of Catholic regiment that you do up until you’re a junior in high school. And that worked to a point. I accepted Christ at 16 and went back and forth with all that in my college years and everything. And then when I got into life, got married, had kids, and life got really challenging, the harder it got, the more I kind of fell away from that, right? I got those definitely out of order. And so I found myself seeking in my mid thirties and I was in the coaching space and getting connected with other coaches and a lot of coaches were going to South America to go do on these retreats and whatever. And I got into that for several years, for four or five years. And it worked for me until it didn’t.

Seems like it works for a season until it’s exceptional. It worked

Until it didn’t. And then I looked around and said, what is really better? Some things are better, but the one, and this is where just as a man, I mean first and foremost, I’m a provider. I’m a protector. And those are two key things, key line items in the job description. When Christina and I came together, we were starting, Christina I would say was kind of ahead of me in her spiritual walk. And I’ll say this to all the women out there, don’t give up on your husband. If you see it, you want it and he’s not there yet. Keep praying, keep working on you. Keep doubling down. Keep doing your Bible study. Get together with other strong women that can lead you and guide you and so forth. Because it does it at some point. I started to wonder, okay, there was even a little bit of separation. I wasn’t, hadn’t really fully surrendered and accepted God and unified within myself with him. Christine was just talking about, and really for me, it got to a point that provider thing wasn’t really working to the level that I needed it to work. And here I had this woman who I’m like, I’m willing to, if I need to go rob a bank to pay this mortgage, fine, I’ll go. If that means I get to keep her. We’re dropping all these bad things on this show. That would be

A totally different interview,

Right?

We’re not robbing anything.

No, that was sort of my mentality. And I was going through a tough time that we have a friend, a mutual friend named Miguel who I’ve met through the business world and he is a prayer warrior, really good man. I think he’s been praying for me a lot longer than I knew. And we were on a call one day, we had just moved to North Carolina. All of our costs had doubled when we moved here over what they were

(44:13)
When I used to live in Nebraska, which about half the cost of living there compared to here. And that’s not even an over-exaggeration. The mortgage went to twice as much as what I paid for my house back in Omaha. All the things, it was just stacking and stacking and stacking. And I didn’t want her to know how scared I was. I didn’t want her to know how behind I was getting. We were getting et cetera. And I was on a call with Miguel and I was just like, I don’t know what will solve this. How do I get this? How do I provide? And we prayed and he said at the end of the call, he said, God told me, he is like, you need to give of your need. And I said, well, I need money. I don’t have any money to give away.

I need money. Whatcha about

He what? He said, so what do you do to get money? I said, I run this program. And he’s like, you need to give it away. And so we did. And a program that used to have a maximum revenue of $80,000 every time we ran it, the very next time we ran it went to almost a quarter million.

He also told you to start tithing

And he was the one who told me to start tithing. So immediately when that worked, I started giving away my 10% right off the top. And I’ve been diligent with that ever since then. And it’s been tough a couple months, but it just, that was sort of the evidence that I needed Aaron to start to really lean in and say, oh, okay, she’s not crazy. This stuff works. There’s something more here for me. About that same time, read a book called Fathered by God, by John Eldridge. And my dad had passed away such a good book now almost 10 years ago. So this is going back a few years ago when I read the book for the first time.

He wrote Wild at Heart too, right? Yes. Yeah. I just finished that book

For

The

First time. It is a great book. Fathered by God. I think it’s just so good. So good

Wild at Heart helped me understand the relationship with my son better as he goes through the different stages. So it helped me in the parenting arena. Father by God changed my relationship. And as a result of reading that book, I accepted the father as my father. And it replaced that earthly relationship that I no longer had the dad that I used to talk to that I could go to for advice. And that shifted for me as I went through all of these things and there’s more details that I could share, but there’s just so much that all sort of came together. I’ll be honest. There were multiple instances of this isn’t working, why isn’t working? This is hard. The money’s gone. Where’s it coming from next? I mean, I fought it and I went back and forth with it and finally it brought me to a state of full surrender. There was no other option. I’m like, I finally said one day I had a conversation with God. I was like, I don’t know how to do this. You do it.

Okay. And here’s the thing. I have to say something as the wife because this is important for couples that are listening.

Oh yeah, she prayed for this by the way, she asked for this.

So I had already removed myself from all of these spiritual practices. We had been dabbling because really, let’s be honest, we were seeking a spiritual experience. We were seeking to know the power that’s available to us through the Holy Spirit. But we had just allowed all these things to infiltrate us in our mind,

Searching in all the wrong places, searching

In all the wrong places. And there’s a lot of them out there in the world mean. But here’s the thing. I had already just had this experience with the Lord. I was having visions and dreams and just down pouring the spirit was just pouring and pouring into me. And I just wanted so much for my husband to come along and lead as a spiritual leader. Meanwhile, I’m like, oh God, he’s totally in the way. He’s called the wrong way. He’s called the wrong way. And I get this a lot from women. How long will I wait for my husband and when is he going to lead and when is he going to be the spiritual leader? And I want to say I remember specifically during that season, before that started for Jesus, I said, Lord, pursue him the way you pursued me. Shake things up, agitate his life. Do what you need to do to get him his attention. And I’ll be faithful. And I know you because I saw what you did in me. I know you called him to be a leader for my family. And that was my prayer. It is like I spoke the vision that I knew that God gave me of him as a leader, even though he wasn’t that leader in the moment.

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And I also surrendered him to the Lord as a wife because it can be very scary to be like, I got to save my husband. I got to fix my husband. I got to, and I know that that doesn’t work. And it was such a, so he’s going through this massive wilderness season and it was hard to watch him go through it, but I knew that God was doing something in him. And it was good because on the other side,

I got this, Christine, thank you for sharing that because you’re not the only wife, nor there’s husbands that are praying. I get emails all the time from both sides saying that they’re fighting and they’re waiting for their spouse to change to become what they know they can be, what God desires them to be. And it’s encouraging that even the word of God recognizes that this is going to be the state in many marriages.

(49:43)
And it’s so encouraging because it says, how do you know wife, that you cannot save your husband by your conduct, that by the way you pursue me and love me and represent me in your home and what transformation that could bring to your husband. And then it says the same for the husband, that there’s a power and authority because you have the Holy Spirit. And like you were saying, you were trusting the Holy Spirit and being patient. You weren’t just waiting, okay, something needs to happen. You were trusting that God was doing something and you were asking and you were being diligent and continuing that. And you got to, as the word says, do not grow aware,

Praying. And I was praying the prophecy over him. I wasn’t like going and complaining to God, what is wrong with my husband? Fix him. I kept speaking life over him and I was very active in my prayer life.

And so I just want all of our listeners to consider that. Are you praying and are you truly, like you said, not just complaining, Lord, change him that this sucks. But I mean we can complain to the Lord. I think he’s a big boy and he can handle our complaints. But also believing it says that love believes all. Okay, so do we believe when we pray that we have what we pray for, do we believe that God is working in our spouse, that God does love our spouse, that God has a plan for our spouse, that God can and will transform our spouse? Are we believing that? And so I agree with you on that. And look, you have, you get to walk in the good fruit of that.

And

I’d love that. So you both had careers, you both had transformation experiences of recognizing what I call the rich young ruler experience. Jesus comes and he’s like, I’ve done all these things. You said I had all these things. She’s like, cool. There’s this one thing you lack.

(51:43)
Go sell everything and follow me. And that story is not about a principle of selling everything and following God. It’s about selling everything that you love. It’s about dying to yourself. And I think the Lord does that to every single person that he comes to us and says, okay, this one thing you lack, and then we get that challenge you did Mark, if you would’ve not taken that challenge, if someone says, Hey, I think this is what the Lord’s telling you. This is what’s holding you back from what you truly desire. This is what is in the way of knowing God, of being with him. If you would’ve said, Nope, you wouldn’t be where you’re at right now. If you had held onto the thing, the one thing, is that true or

It is true? God doesn’t do anything halfway.

Nope.

Right? He doesn’t clean part of the house. He doesn’t right. He doesn’t fix it. Part of the way he’s interested in all of it. That’s been my interpretation in following this. And then deciding to follow and recognizing it’s not done. It’s not done. And we will also, by the way, get to continue to surrender and die to the current cells in order to birth whatever’s coming after this, right? I mean, we’re lockstep looking ahead at 50, 60 years yet. And guess what? There’s going to be more upgrades and more change. And it’s been one of my things lately. I’ve been complaining to God a little bit. I’m like trying to catch my breath here. Do we got to go again? Is it really the next round already? Can we just sit here for a second and enjoy what we have? And to the answer, he’s like, yeah, you get to keep that, but you’re also, you’re ready. Go do this next thing. And that’s been an interesting part of the journey lately.

Don’t fall too in love with where you’re at. I think I put that quote in the book, Miguel, the same spiritual brother that said that to Mark, said that to me once,

And

I put it in the book, is enjoy the view from where you’re at, but don’t fall. So in love with the view that you’re afraid to get up and move when God calls you.

Amen. And also, my wife and I tend to look at life now, we have to be reminded of this. Often we get caught in the weeds,

But

Just recognizing that life’s not about, I think the American perspective, I don’t think this has always been the case, but I think in America we have this idea of there’s this ideal that we’re searching for. And it’s never a solid image. It’s always changing, but it’s always out in the distance. And so we tend to think that we’re moving towards that, but it’s actually, it’s a moving target that we never catch. And so there’s two things that need to be at play always in the believer’s life is contentment where you’re at with a willingness of change. With a willingness of movement, with a willingness of like, well, a good example, my wife and I built a house a couple of years ago and that’s the one we live in. People will say things like, is that your forever home? Okay. That’s a common thing that people are like, this isn’t my forever home. This is my transition home. And that there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think the fallacy is thinking that there’s such thing as a forever home other than being with the Lord.

And

So I look at it as like, well, this is our home right now and I love it and I’m going to try and take care of it, and I’m going to try and increase its value as anyone should and, and I’m going to enjoy it. But no, if the Lord wants me to move on, if the Lord wants me to be in another place, that’s going to be the next home that I have. And because I think you mentioned something about this, you can get stuck if you get stuck. If I get married to it and I say, this is my forever home, then I’m going to ignore the prompts from the Holy Spirit if they come when they come. And we don’t want to do that. We want to be open-handed so that God can put in and take out here, this is my life. Fill me and pour me out. Fill me and pour me out. So, amen. Okay, I want to get into this unification stuff. Okay. This is so good. We’ve been talking about, you guys had your things over here and they’ve come together and you guys, why don’t you briefly tell me about this new thing that you guys have now started together. Let go of the old things. You’ve started a new thing, and then I want you to share what we talked about, the supernatural unification, because I thought it was so beautiful and it’s something that we can all be encouraged with.

Yeah. Yeah. So good. Well, one of the things that Mark and I do every year, obviously we got married in December 28th in the mountains of Colorado. And so every year we do this practice of going away together and just spending that time between Christmas and New Year’s, just reviewing the year, praying for the new year, what’s our word for the year? All the things. And last year as we were going through this, a lot of people do a word of the year. For us, it was like

(56:43)
Unification, but it was not just unification, it was supernatural unification. And we were in Colorado, we were in Winter Park and we’re like, this is it. This is our word of the year. This is what God is calling us to press into. It’s supernatural unification beyond the natural, beyond what we think unification is. And we’re like, alright, we can get behind it. We think that’s great. We like unification. We like each other. We’re all for that. At the time, we still had some of our finances. We had unified our finances, but not to the level that we have now. We had

Not, which is pretty common I think.

And again, a lot of the world says that just have your money over here. Just protect yourself. Make sure that especially in your second marriage, you’ve already messed this up once. Don’t do it again. So you’re just listening to all this worldly wisdom. And so even though we had such a heart for each other and such a desire for each other, and we were referring to each other, we were already working together and hosting retreats together, there was still a lot of separation. There was still a lot of separation and protection of like, okay, this is my stuff. This is your stuff. I’ll manage money my way. You are cool. I’m not going to get in your business. And it was a protective mechanism too. I don’t have to look under the hood of how you’re managing money and then have an opinion about it or how you’re running your business. And here’s the thing, the minute we said, yeah, Lord, we’re doing it, he said, all right, money.

(58:07)
Let’s work on money together. The God of the world. And as we started to say, yeah, okay, we’re going to unify our finances. I think we were both excited but really terrified of what this actually meant because this was like we decided to go all in on, and again, there’s lots of different ideas around us, but be the lenders, not the borrowers. Eliminate all of our debt. Totally bring everything under one hood and really look at are we stewarding finances the kingdom way? Are we really multiplying what God has put us? Where are we being wasteful stewards? I mean, we started getting taken through it and it started to bring up a lot of opportunities to talk about what we were holding on to pass things done, things that were being hidden. And the money thing was one, we could dive into that. But then soon after we started to go through that and he was like the business, because again, it was so much of our identity was like, well, I’m over here.

(59:06)
I’m an executive coach speaker, I’m an author. I do this. This is my way. And he had his and he’s like, I have something bigger for you. It’s not bigger for you. I’m doing a new thing. Isaiah 43, behold I’m doing a new thing. Can you see it? And I’m making a way in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. And you’re like, okay, what is this new thing? And he started birthing like, and I love how he’s so gracious, Aaron. He doesn’t give you the whole lay of the land. He starts with one thing. Let’s start with this. Start with

Your mind, take this one step.

And you say yes. And then things start coming up and there’s all this opportunity to extend grace and forgiveness and have difficult conversations. But man, when we even brought our finances completely under the same hood, a lot of people disagree with this. A lot of people hate on Dave Ramsey for this, but he’s got something dialed in. When you start bringing your finances together as a couple, the multiplication power starts happening fast. Your ability to increase wealth, your ability to steward wealth, it just goes to a whole other level. And I want to say I was a naysayer of that. I was a naysayer of that for as long as I can remember.

Yeah, statistics prove it true.

Nobody my money. But now it’s like God’s like, it’s not your money, honey. It’s my money. It’s not your business. It’s my business. And so this is been the journey.

There’s a biblical analogy about this, not just about money, but about the refining of gold or silver in the refiners fire. And you heat it and heat it and heat it. And the thing is silver and gold, the more you heat it, it doesn’t ever deplete in value. It only increases in value. But all the impurities, the dross rises to the top and can be scraped off, can be scraped off. But if you’re never willing to be put into the refiners fire, that dross will never rise to the top. It just remains mixed in. You remain of a certain value. Not no value, but of a certain value. But what you’re talking about is you said, okay, exactly

That

We are ready to be refined. And God’s like, Okie dokie.

Yes. And this is it. This is what you just said is so good. I’m so glad you brought that up because in that refiner’s fire, we did increase in value and we are experiencing this supernatural unification, what it actually means. But he really, and it wasn’t so much, it was about unification, but it was also about removing all of this stuff that we had placed as idols in our lives that we were still betting on. Our identity was still rooted. He was also changing our whole perspective. It’s not yours and his everything and under the earth belongs to me. Everything in the earth is mine. And I would say that that’s been a big shift, certainly for myself. I no longer look at money is my money, your money, my business, your business, my clients, your clients. It’s like everything belongs to the Lord. And I think he really needed to do that

Work

In both of us so that he could use us the way he’s starting to use us now.

Yeah. I believe it’s in Deuteronomy, correct me if I’m wrong, where it says one can put a thousand to flight, but two can put 10,000 to flight,

I think. I don’t know. Is that right? You might be right.

I

Don’t know. Yeah, carry on.

Regardless. That’s really what’s happening now. You can see it. Somebody had said that to us, smoking that over us and it took it to heart. And that has been for me, I mean a lot of the guiding now, look what gets to happen because we went through that because the value has increased because there’s more efficacy,

(01:02:53)
Because there’s more transparency and there’s actually less stress inside of our house. People come to our house all the time, so much less people come to our house all the time. They’re like more, it’s so peaceful here. What? It’s so homey here, right? Because baked all that stuff that makes that not happen out, it’s not about the couch. The couch as a couch. It can get any other couch and put in the exact same spot and you get the same experience. It’s not about, the kitchen is nice, but it’s not about the kitchen. It’s about people that are living and what we’re doing in this space.

I just Googled it. It’s Joshua 2310

Joshua. Okay, there you

Go.

There you go.

Thank you.

(01:03:32)
Great scripture reference by the way. Right? And the beauty of what you’re talking about is every marriage, this is the north star is our life. Gods is our marriage. Gods is our finances Gods a lot of people when it comes to tithe, when it comes to money, money is such a good gauge for our surrender to the Lord. It is for everyone. It’s for me, it’s for my wife, it’s for you guys. And when it comes to tithe, if the question is like, well, how much do I need to give to the Lord? Then we’re missing the point that in the New Testament, Jesus totally redos the whole idea of tithe

(01:04:14)
In the sense of recognizing whose it is in the first place. It’s not about giving the minimum. It’s about recognizing that it’s his in the first place and that he’s allowed us to steward it. And it’s not just our money, it’s our homes. Like you were just saying, it’s our businesses. And then on the deepest level, it’s our marriage. It’s the way we love each other and walk with each other. And I think you guys have a beautiful testimony of how God’s been walking you through this. And if God can do it for you, do you guys think he can do it for others?

Yeah. I’ve been pretty hardheaded about this whole thing. I’ll be honest, because this resistant, the evidence is, this is where I think any dude, at least I’ll speak for the men listening to this, because we are pretty thick and we think that we can handle a lot of things on our own, and we do. We self isolate and we try to take this on, and there’s a core wound in all of us that causes us, I think, to do that. But for me, it was once I realized, once I finally realized this is how I lead better, being in connection, being guided with the father, being in connection with him, that’s actually, he’s the ceo, right? I’m not, yeah, he’s in charge of this family, of this business, of this life, of whatever. He’s in charge and you are right. It is at least the bare minimum in terms of tithe. But if he asks for all of it, then it’s all of it, right? Amen. It’s really whatever the boss says. If I can get to that level of peace around money, having gone through everything that we’ve gone through even in just recent years, then I would imagine any of you guys out there listening to can get there too.

Amen. Thank you for that. I would like to close with, could you have an encouragement for any couples that are struggling with division and their marriage? They are living, they’re together. They have some unity in some areas, but he has his things and his life and his money and his hobbies. She has her things and her life and her hobbies and her money. How would you encourage these couples to see supernatural unification as something that they should not just walk toward but run toward?

You? Go first.

The more you can surround yourself with other people that are living the life that you know is divinely inspired by God is really true in that space. This has been one of the biggest things that we’ve done this year. Again, I resisted this. I didn’t want to invest in this program. It’s like we don’t need another coaching program. We don’t need another thing. But we entered into this coaching program with this couple. It was a couple that epitomizes what we want to be in their 10 years older than us. They’re more experienced than us. They live out what they preach. And so we do our calls. We spend as much time learning from them, immersing ourselves in our content as we can. So regardless of, it doesn’t have to be a coaching program. Maybe it’s somebody at church. Maybe it’s somebody that you respect in your community who’s just, at least they’re where you think you guys would like to be. Or if your spouse is not on board, they’re where you’d like to be. Get yourself in that person’s energy in that space and go visit them. Take them to coffee,

Absorb,

Absorb. Just the more you can be around people that are leveling up, we’re creatures that assimilate into the people that we’re around the most. And that way this will do two things. One, you’re going to learn, you’re going to absorb, you’re going to start to become more like them. Two, you’ll start to repel the people that are pulling you down and into your old life.

Yeah. Why is that?

And that’s maybe a little bit challenging for some because it feels like, oh, I don’t want to let go, or I’m going to offend somebody or I’m going to have to let something go. But you really do, and that’s okay. Those people will still be there. You can still go visit. You can still have connection. You probably just don’t spend as much time with them. And those two things right there are accelerant. They’re a catalyst, right? That will bring you wherever God is taking you.

Some good wisdom right there.

It’s so important to have fellowship. I think we try to do things alone. I think you guys talked about it in a marriage after God, right? You’re trying to figure it out. It feels like there’s so much shame around it, but seek those who’ve gone before us. We’re called to be the body of Christ for each other. I actually want to take a different approach, and this is just something that has really helped me. I’m a big prayer warrior. I’m a big spiritual warrior. I love to activate things and just do the work in the supernatural so that the Lord will have the physical reality when we get to work in the spiritual realm first. And so I just want to say this. If someone is struggling with, I’ve got my things that I want and he’s got, he’s things that he wants and we’re not on seeing eye to eye, and really what’s happening is you have a house that’s divided.

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Pride is running the show. We just need to call it what it is. We’ve allowed the leviathan of pride to come in and we all have desires and we all have dreams, and God gave us dreams and desires. Two things I want to say. Number one is as we start to go, Lord, what desires have you given me? It’s not just a desire for this dream, but as we go into our heart, we’ve all have these desires and these deep longings for intimacy, for connection, for being heard, for just search your desires. Ask the Lord to search your desires because he did create you for a thriving marriage. And I will say that my relationship with God, if I am in great communication with the Lord and I’m in great intimacy and I take care of this relationship first, this relationship, all of a sudden I started experiencing intimacy here where I’m like, it’s not about trying to get intimacy here. It starts here. So it’s like if I’m longing, intimacy, if I’m longing, connection, go get connected to the Lord. Ask for that to be transferred over to your marriage. The second thing is, honestly for me, that verse that I think is so often take out of context is delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I think a lot of people think slot machine, Hey, Lord, I love you. Give me what I want. One of my greatest prayers has been, Lord, change my desires,

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Change my wants for, I want what you want for my marriage. Let me see my husband, the way you see him increase my desire for him. You’re asking the Lord to get to work on your heart so that you could see your marriage, your husband, your wife, through his eyes. You want the same things that He wants. I love David for this in the Bible. David was such a great reflection of this. He earnestly saw the Lord’s heart. He wanted to want the same things that the Lord wants. And I will say that if you can just get to the place where you could start praying these prayers, you’re going to start to notice like, man, I don’t know what’s happening inside me. And they’re kind of scary prayers. We don’t want to let go of the things that we’re so entrenched in, but he’ll start changing the shape of our desires and the way we see things and the way we hear things.

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So the prayers, Lord, let me want what you want for my marriage. Let me see what you see. Let me hear what you hear. Let me say the things that you want spoken. And I guarantee you if you do that before you know it, you guys are going to be sinking up. He’s going to start giving you both similar desires. He’s going to start giving you both similar visions, and all of a sudden there’s this desire to lean in towards each other where there was never that, because you guys pride was like two bulls in a China closet. Now you’ve allowed the Holy Spirit to come in and start to create the glue.

So good. Hey, mark and Christine, that was such a wonderful conversation and I really appreciate you guys coming on the show. Would you please, I don’t think you mentioned it yet, what is the name of the business ministry thing that you guys now do together so that people can go check you out?

So the business is now called The Momentum Company, and the website will be the Momentum company.com. November 1st. Yeah, starting November 1st. Actually 2025 or 2024. That should be up. That’s coming up coming. So that’s only a week from right now as we record this. So yeah, exciting, exciting times. Full executive coaching all the way through team development that we’re offering for organizations with a spiritual twist.

And we also, you can also find our podcast. I have a podcast called The Breaking Chains Podcast, which is all about breaking the chains of our past, living the life of freedom that we’re created to live. And Mark also has a podcast called The Intentional Agribusiness Leader, right?

Yep, that’s right. Intentional Agribusiness Leader.

And then Christine, you have a book called Drop the Armor.

I have this little baby book. It’s not a baby book. It’s not a

Baby book. This is a huge book.

It’s something to sink your teeth into, drop the armor. It’s all about how do we release the past, ignite a faith of fire in our heart, and really unlock the extra ordinary life God has for us? Because we are not called to be ordinary. We are called to be extra ordinary. So

Awesome. You guys. Thank you so much for being on the show. I’ll make sure that all the links to the things you were just sharing will be in the show notes. But I appreciate you guys and thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

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

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