Why A Healthy Lifestyle Is Important For A Healthy Marriage

Episode 3 of  the Marriage After God Podcast is available to watch, listen to, or read! 

This episode we dialog about the importance of maintaining good health and how it honors God and benefits your marriage. We share personal stories from our lives to give you perspective on why good health is important. Enjoy!

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Aaron Smith: Hey we’re Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.

Jennifer Smith: Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Aaron Smith: Today we’re going to talk about why a healthy lifestyle is important for a healthy marriage.
We’re excited to have you guys with us and before we could jump in we just wanted to invite you guys to subscribe to our videos, if you’re liking these videos and also hit the bell next to the subscribe button so that you get notified anytime we upload a new video.

Jennifer Smith: Also if any of this content is inspiring to you or makes you think about something, go ahead and leave a comment so that we know you’re listening along.

Aaron Smith: Awesome. Today we’re going to be talking about why a healthy lifestyle is important for a healthy marriage. This has been something that we have struggled with, pretty much our whole marriage. Not that we have been super overweight or had major issues with eating but, we haven’t been intentional about it. Over the last year and a half, I would say that we’ve gotten a little bit more intentional with it. We want to talk about what we’ve seen come out of it.

Jennifer Smith: The benefits.

Aaron Smith: The benefits and now we have three specific areas that we believe having a healthy lifestyle helps in your marriage.

Jennifer Smith: Before we jump into those, I thought it would be fun to just give them some background on what you have been doing and what I’ve been doing the last year. A year and a half.

Aaron Smith: A year and a half ago, I had this … I had this weight.

Jennifer Smith: A little extra.

Aaron Smith: Like I said, I don’t think I’ve ever been overweight, I just always told myself if I ever got over 200 pounds …

Jennifer Smith: He’d do something about it.

Aaron Smith: I would do something about it. Like a year went by without me ever checking my weight and I looked down and I was 220. I was like, “Oh, oops.” Which is okay. What I did about it was I started going to the gym. I didn’t do anything crazy. I just said, “Hey, I’m just going to get up in the morning and I’m just going to go.” I got a little membership for like, $20 a month. The point was, I wasn’t trying to do anything crazy with it, I wasn’t trying to lose all the weight really fast, I just wanted to do something.
That’s how I work. Instead of, “I’m going to do this for five weeks and I’m going to get insane with it,” I usually give up if I try that. I tried doing something different where I was just going to take a baby step. That was a year and a half ago, and now I’m at a place where I go to the gym 4 – 5 times a week.

Jennifer Smith: Completely different.

Aaron Smith: I’m doing crossfit now, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of crossfit, but –

Jennifer Smith: Super intense.

Aaron Smith: – I’m drench in sweat. I finally, a couple months ago, got past the point of hating going. Now, I actually kind of enjoy it.

Jennifer Smith: You enjoy it a lot.

Aaron Smith: I do. I’m enjoying it a lot. We’re not necessarily talking today about the intensity of the healthy lifestyle. We’re just talking about the patterns of a healthy lifestyle. We’re talking about the benefits that you can get from it. Yes, I’ve been doing a lot of working out. I’m enjoying what I’m seeing out of it.

Jennifer Smith: Total body transformation, too.

Aaron Smith: Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot of fruit in other areas of our life because of it and those are the things we want to talk about. What have you been doing over the last few months?

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, it hasn’t been quite as long as you but, because you started doing cross fit and I started seeing the changes in your body and your energy levels and your attitude even, I was encouraged to take hold of my own physical fitness and I knew that I had throughout my pregnancies let myself go a little bit. I wasn’t as strong as I used to be. We also were talking about maybe having another baby. I wanted to get stronger first.
I talked to you about going to the gym as well. I actually got a personal trainer to walk me through how to do get –

Aaron Smith: Yeah, because you’ve never done it before. You’ve never done a …

Jennifer Smith: – physically fit. I’ve never really done it before. Never really stepped into a gym. Maybe once. Yeah, started doing that and started getting really strong and again, started seeing those positive changes and energy level spikes.

Aaron Smith: In lots of areas of your life.

Jennifer Smith: Yes. In lots of areas, even with intimacy –

Aaron Smith: I noticed a little too.

Jennifer Smith: With intimacy, we were engaging more and ended up getting pregnant, so we’re on our fourth and since then I haven’t been going to the gym as much but I was still trying to go at least once a week. Yeah, just really been enjoying that whole process and the benefits from it.

Aaron Smith: Knowing that we’ve been trying to be healthier in our diets and our activity, we just thought it would be awesome to share with you guys the benefits and what comes from that and how it benefits our marriages.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, and I will say, several years ago, we went through a diet change, doing sugar busters. I don’t know if you guys have heard of sugar busters, but it was a really intense switchover from what we were used to. Where we had to look at all of our products that we would buy in the store and look at all the ingredients list and make sure we weren’t buying stuff with added sugar. Simple things like spaghetti sauce and peanut butter.

Aaron Smith: We didn’t do it for very long. We actually hate diets.

Jennifer Smith: Maybe like four months it was really strict. Because of the patterns we developed from that experience, we actually kept it. This was years ago and we still whenever I’m at the grocery store. I don’t need to check as many ingredients now, because I’m familiar with –

Aaron Smith: With the certain products that we love but, one of our number one things we do is we just look for products that don’t have added sugars.

Jennifer Smith: It’s been super helpful with just eating healthy at home.

Aaron Smith: Yeah, to the majority of the food in our refrigerator and pantry have no added sugars.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, you’ll probably actually be really surprised and shocked at how much sugar is, we actually just found out that iodized salt, table salt has sugar added to it.

Aaron Smith: Oh, yeah. Yeah I –

Jennifer Smith: Which, we don’t know why that is. Anyways, if you want to take a minute, later on today, just check your pantry, check your refrigerator and see what those ingredients are.

Aaron Smith: Yeah, calculate how many items you have that actually have, if in the ingredients, if there are any sugars, dextrose, molasses, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and just see how many items actually have sugar in it. That’s one of our … I would say, we don’t like diets, we don’t do diets. What we would do is when we shop, we make sure we’re not getting added sugars.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah. Sugar is really toxic to your body. It spikes your insulin, and that causes a whole other chain reaction throughout your body with your hormones and everything. It is better to stay away from sugar if we can.

Aaron Smith: As much as possible. It doesn’t mean we don’t have deserts and stuff.

Jennifer Smith: Sure.

Aaron Smith: That’s just, again it’s a lifestyle.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah.

Aaron Smith: For the most part. Over the last few years of us trying to change our lifestyle and trying to be more healthy, we’ve found three areas that we’ve noticed positive effects in because of us pursuing a healthy lifestyle and how it has benefited our marriage. We would like to share with you those three areas today and explain how they could benefit you.
The first benefit that we’ve seen from pursuing a healthy lifestyle and marriage and life is discipline. This is something that every person needs. It’s something that if we have more of it, it makes us better people, more loving, more kind, more patient. Just having discipline. Another word for it is self control or commitment. I wanted to read a scripture to you real quick, it’s in Proverbs 25:28. It says, “A man without self control is like a city broken in two and left without walls.”
This idea of the scripture is that a man that doesn’t have self control is like someone who is weak and vulnerable and can be taken advantage of and can be attacked, that’s the idea. It’s good for us to build up our self control and our endurance and our self discipline that we’re learning those traits so that we aren’t vulnerable.

Jennifer Smith: I’m curious, if you’ve ever experienced this or you listening. If you, when you don’t have that discipline, don’t you feel weak and vulnerable and more susceptible to sicknesses or feeling overwhelmed or feeling burdened by things? You just …

Aaron Smith: Well, yeah, not having self discipline when it comes to food, or not having self discipline when it comes to bodily exercise, does physiologically make you weak, make you sick, make you tired. You have lack of motivation, not very good mental clarity. It helps you have a hard time having the energy to do the things that God’s asked us to do.

Jennifer Smith: Individually if we’ve actually lacked on the discipline side of things and the lack of self control, you actually see it break down your entire home structure. Your whole house goes crazy.

Aaron Smith: There was a season that, we’re self employed, we work from home. THere’s a season that we would sleep in, the Bible in Proverbs talks a lot about people who love sleep. This idea, not that sleep is a bad thing, it’s the people that, it’s the idea that we love our sleep. We want to keep sleeping. It’s laziness.

Jennifer Smith: It is laziness. I will say you started making this change in this area first, of just the sleeping in that I want to mention. It took me a while to catch up, and so I would actually get up right with the kids. It was still chaotic. I remember feeling rushed and not having time to get ready for the day and not really knowing how my day was going to go and feeling rushed throughout the whole thing, it was just chaotic.

Aaron Smith: Yeah, and so discipline, me going to the gym in the morning, I get up at 6:00 and I start working out at 6:30, I get home by 730 – 8:00. I’m up before the kids, my kids see me coming home. They see that I’ve done something and I’ve worked hard and they see that I have a routine that they can learn from. It’s changed our sleep patterns, it forces me to want to go to bed earlier, which is a good, healthy thing, to be in bed at a good time. It’s forced me to get up early and have a routine. I’ve gotten to a point now where I can tell I’m like, “Man, I’m not going to enjoy the morning because I shouldn’t have stayed up too late or I ate too much or I shouldn’t have had that dessert.”
When I do, it feels so good. It actually starts my day off. When I don’t go to the gym, again, this doesn’t mean you have to go to the gym, but just having these patterns of discipline, when I don’t go to the gym, I actually feel like my day’s off. I’ve created such a pattern of my life that when I’m up at 6:30 and I do that, I know what comes next.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, and you’re ready for it.

Aaron Smith: I’m ready for it. My body’s engaged and my mind’s engaged. Have you felt that with you going to the gym or the patterns that you’ve been trying to work in. Getting up early has been hard for you, especially being pregnant.

Jennifer Smith: I’ll tell them. Just recently, I was getting back into the pattern of sleeping in until the kids wake up and first trimester sicknesses and things just not feeling well. It’s been hard for me but about two weeks ago you came to me and you were like, “Hey, how do you feel about getting up early and making sure that you’re getting in the word and getting ready for the day before the kids -”

Aaron Smith: Yeah, prepare yourself.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, preparing myself. I’ve been doing it, and I don’t even think I’ve set an alarm yet. I feel like the Lord’s just been like …

Aaron Smith: She gets up like 5 minutes before she wants to get up, just automatically.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, which is pretty awesome. I do all the things that I need to do and I’m ready for the kids when they wake up. I just want to encourage those listening that … A marriage after God is one who allows your spouse to speak into your life, to require things of you, to build you up and to expect the best of you.

Aaron Smith: That’s what we do for each other.

Jennifer Smith: Allowing you to speak into my like and say, “Hey Jen, I want you to get up earlier.” Me being able to receive that is really important.

Aaron Smith: You did, which I thought was awesome.

Jennifer Smith: It’s benefited me.

Aaron Smith: It’s not always been that way.

Jennifer Smith: No, there’s definitely been times in our marriage where I’ve resisted your …

Aaron Smith: Prompts.

Jennifer Smith: … requests or prompts or whatever they are. I have done that and that just makes my life even more miserable, because then I’m still living a chaotic life with the guilt of knowing that I’m not in submission to you. I just want to encourage those listening that being married is so awesome because you guys are there to help each other. Be willing to speak into each other’s lives and be willing to receive it when you do.

Aaron Smith: You mention that I invited, I said, “Why don’t you get up earlier, get into the Word and prepare yourself spiritually in the morning.” The other side of this, we’re to going to just talk about physical discipline and health, we’re going to talk about spiritual discipline and health. This idea of having a discipline, for me, getting up early in the morning to go to the gym is only a part of my discipline. It helps me be more disciplined.
After the gym, I get in the car and I pray. I spend time in prayer. I’ve been able to couple those two things together, like “Oh, I’m all ready awake. There’s no one awake, no one needs me right now. I’m going to pray.”

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, it’s really cool. I was just thinking as you’re talking and sharing this that you come home and because I’ve been doing my part, the kids have been fed, they’re ready for the day. They’re ready to sit down and Dad comes in and teaches the [inaudible 00:12:21] Word.

Aaron Smith: Yeah, I get home from the gym, I take my shower, I get out of the shower and I go straight to the kitchen table where the kids are eating breakfast and you’re eating breakfast and I’ve been making it a point to read the bible to the kids every single day.

Jennifer Smith: It’s been so great. Elliot, he’s five, he’s been asking questions. Total engagement, it’s been such a blessing.

Aaron Smith: The question for you is not just discipline, not just are you learning discipline in the health and the physical side, but how are you learning to discipline yourself in the spiritual things, which is infinitely more important. Yes, we’re talking about a healthy lifestyle, but we’re talking about a healthy spirituality too. When you start making these decisions to have self control when you’re eating, have self control in how you use your body and that you’re not just being lazy, that actually multiplies into well, I have the time now, I’m all ready awake. I’m going to get into the word, I’m going to pray. My mind’s on, my heart’s on. My spirit’s active and I’m going to …
This morning I prayed, “Okay Lord, and help me walk in your spirit today. Help me have your heart today.” Those are the things I was praying for today. Having physical discipline and spiritual discipline, spiritual discipline is more important, but both is good.

Jennifer Smith: If you guys just want to take a minute, just evaluate your life, evaluate your marriage, evaluate your family life and what that looks like. If there’s any areas where you’re lacking that self control and that self discipline, just make a little note of it and start praying over those areas and talk to your spouse about it. Make sure that you guys are tackling it as a team and making change in these areas. It really is important.

Aaron Smith: The second thing we want to get into is this idea of example. Walking in a healthy lifestyle and having a healthy spirituality it leads to what we call having an example to follow. A perfect example to give you of this is over the … A couple years ago, my heart was like, “Man, I want my wife to be healthy, I want her to get back in shape.” These things, which are hard conversations to have and I realized, I don’t know if you all have heard of the plank-eye; take the plank out of your own eye before you get the speck out of your brother’s eye. I just realized that the Lord said, “Hey, if you want to lead your wife in this, you need to do it yourself.”
Instead of going to my wife and saying, “Babe, I need you to get back in shape. Babe I need you to start eating better. Babe, I need you to start exercising,” and she’s got a new baby and she’s figuring out how to be a Mom of two and then a Mom of three. I decided to become an example for her instead. I wasn’t doing it myself.
What I did was, I just said, “Well, I’m going to start walking out something that I would desire my wife to walk in, so that I can be an example to her so that I can actually lead her in it.”

Jennifer Smith: It worked.

Aaron Smith: It did work. I actually never had to say anything to you.

Jennifer Smith: You never said anything to me because I remember having this conversation with you like two or three months later and you brought it up and I had all ready been –

Aaron Smith: Yeah, I was doing this for months.

Jennifer Smith: – I had all ready entered the gym and started working out and eating better too. Yeah, you didn’t have to say anything to me, but it was simply your example that inspired me to want to also walk in that change and so that was really cool.

Aaron Smith: It also became an example in our home where, one thing that we were having the kids, because they see me exercising …

Jennifer Smith: I would come home and Olive’s like, “I can work out,” and she does a squat and it’s the cutest thing ever.

Aaron Smith: Her squats are funny. Elliot tries to do 10 push ups every night with us. It’s just one of those things where he’s participating in what we’re doing. Paul says this often in his writings in the New Testament. He says, “Follow my example, as I follow Christ’s example.” We need to be living lives not just, again not just physically and in the way we eat, but in our spirituality. What kind of example are we leaving in our home? Can we lead by example?
Can I tell someone to be healthy when I’m unhealthy myself?

Jennifer Smith: Or your spouse?

Aaron Smith: Can I tell my spouse to be healthy when I’m unhealthy myself. Especially as the leader of my home, the only real way to lead in this, in any of these things is by example. I can’t tell my kids to get in the Word of God and then me not ever be in the Word of God.

Jennifer Smith: Or, in my case, I can’t tell my kids to eat healthy when they’re teenagers if I haven’t been living that example –

Aaron Smith: In front of them.

Jennifer Smith: -in front of them –

Aaron Smith: Especially when you’re the one that gives them the food. What you choose, they choose.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah.

Aaron Smith: This goes, not just being an example in health fitness, but this goes more so into example spirituality. Talking about the Word of God, me trying to get into the Bible every day and read to the kids, I’m trying to be an example to them. I want them to see me open the Bible. I want them to hear me read the words. I want them to see me be excited about it. I don’t want them to think, “Well, Dad never did that.” I don’t want them to think, “Well, Dad never did that.” Oh yeah, maybe he was on –
I try not to read my Bible in front of them because all it looks like it, “I’m on my phone.”

Jennifer Smith: Yeah.

Aaron Smith: It doesn’t look like I’m in the Word of God. I sit down at the table and I open the Bible and I be an example to them, while reading to them, and they see it. Not just in getting up early, not just in going to the gym, not just in desiring to eat healthy and have a healthy lifestyle, but more so in showing examples spirituality. Do we pray? Do we run to the Word of God when we have questions? Do we encourage them with scripture?

Jennifer Smith: Are you participating in fellowship?

Aaron Smith: Do we go to them and repent to them when we are wrong? Which is something that we have to do often. Showing an example to them spirituality of what a Christian acts like and sounds like and looks like. The second thing we just wanted to bring up to you is what kind of example are you being in your home to your wife, to your children, to your co-workers, to your friends? Are you living a healthy example for them?

Jennifer Smith: We want to be an encouragement to you guys. If you are listening to us and you’re like, I don’t know where to start. I haven’t been in the Word, I haven’t been praying –

Aaron Smith: This is good.

Jennifer Smith: – I haven’t been working with my spouse in this area at all. We just wanted to let you know that we have created these resources, wife after God and husband after God. It’s a 30-day devotional. They walk you through Biblical principles in reflection of marriage and in regards to marriage –

Aaron Smith: It helps build a habit, because it takes 30 days to complete it.

Jennifer Smith: Yep, this is something that you guys can commit to that you’ll need discipline to do.

Aaron Smith: These books require you to open the Bible. We wrote them in a way that you have to have your Bible with you.

Jennifer Smith: We wrote them specifically for that. If that’s one way that you guys want to launch this thing and tell your spouse, “We’re making a change in this area,” this might be a great way to start.

Aaron Smith: We have those at shop.unveiledwife.com. There’s going to be a link in the description of this video.
Let’s move onto the last area that we’ve seen growth because trying to talk in a healthy lifestyle, physically and spirituality. It’s ability. Would you be able to define this for me? I brought this one up when we were trying to figure out the topics.

Jennifer Smith: Basically, what are you able to do because you’re walking in a healthy lifestyle because you are disciplined with your eating and with exercising and with your spiritual disciplines of reading the word and praying. Your mind is focused, your heart is focused. You guys are moving together in oneness. In your marriage and then your family is following in that example. This is ability. This is the benefits.

Aaron Smith: A perfect example of growing in our abilities because we’re trying to be healthier is I feel like I have tons of energy to play with my kids.

Jennifer Smith: You do, every night. You play with them. It’s been great.

Aaron Smith: Not just, I used to go outside and I would just sit on the bench and watch them play, which I still do because I get tired. Now, I can run around with them. I’m pulling them on sleds, I’m letting them jump on me. I have three kids, with a fourth on the way. I am going to need energy. I’m going to need strength to be able to hold them, to be able to lift them up into the bunk bed and to let them crawl on me and play on me.

Jennifer Smith: He does this really cute thing where at night, the kids are usually in our bed and they’ll say, “The train’s coming!” And it’s Dad, and they’ll all jump on him and he, “Choo! Choo!”

Aaron Smith: I choo choo by them and they jump on me and grab my ears and my –

Jennifer Smith: Then he takes them to their bedroom. It’s just things like that where you’re able to engage with our children because you are physically fit and you have chose that.

Aaron Smith: What’s one ability that you feel like you’ve increased in? Because of desiring to walk in a healthy lifestyle and taking efforts in that?

Jennifer Smith: I also feel like I’ve become stronger. I didn’t realize –

Aaron Smith: You have muscles in places you’ve never had before.

Jennifer Smith: No, I know. It’s so true. I didn’t realize going to the gym, I thought it was going to be more cardio. She actually had me strength tranining. I was lifting weights that I never thought I would be able to. I used to do five pounds at home with a little home video thing, but there, I was able to lift as much as 25 pounds and I’ve never been able to do that before.

Aaron Smith: It’s pretty good for you.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, being able to have that energy and that strength to be able to engage with my kids on a more personal level I’ve been more intimate with you. I’ve been way more energetic in that area.

Aaron Smith: Naturally, exercise increases libido, and all of the hormones that go with a healthy sex life.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah. My desire for it has been increased, but also my agility and my ability to –

Aaron Smith: Stamina.

Jennifer Smith: That’s what I mean. Just being able to enjoy that time.

Aaron Smith: This is another huge, this is – I would say this specifically is a more spiritual side of having a healthy lifestyle of exercising and eating healthy, because that increases our oneness.

Jennifer Smith: Oh, yeah.

Aaron Smith: The desire that you, your increased desire for me, my increased desire for you, us having a more active and healthy sexual lifestyle. Man, it’s made us much closer, it’s made us more confident with each other and in our walks with God. I just would say, that in itself, that ability, the growth in that area is –

Jennifer Smith: It’s been huge. Exponential growth.

Aaron Smith: If that was the only reason, we –

Jennifer Smith: It’s been worth it.

Aaron Smith: It’s been worth it, for sure. We want to encourage you guys. In healthy physically and in your eating habits. Those all play a role in how you operate in your marriage and as a unit and what you’re capable of doing. Another ability on the spiritual side of things as we are practicing discipline and example in the Word of God and in prayer, is we actually have the ability to speak truth into each other’s lives.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah. Because we’re walking it, we don’t feel guilty or shame or embarrassment when we need to speak –

Aaron Smith: Or like hypocrites

Jennifer Smith: Or like hypocrites when we have to speak the truth, when God prompts our hearts.

Aaron Smith: We have the ability to teach our children because we’re getting into it and it’s like, “Well, someone’s going to teach them.” No, no, we teach them.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah.

Aaron Smith: We open the Word of God and on the chalkboard over there, we put scripture and it’s like our theme for the week and it’s something that we’re trying to teach our children as we talked about another video. We teach them and we repeat that verse over and over and over again. Spirituality when you’re walking in discipline and having a healthy, spiritual lifestyle, your ability to walk in what God’s called you to walk in, it increases. That’s essentially what we’re called to do. It’s called maturity, when we walk in the spiritual maturities, and we walk in spiritual discipline and we walk in becoming an example spirituality, we grow in ability spirituality. What we’re capable of doing, what we’re no longer afraid of talking to so and so about the bible because we actually understand it better.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, I was actually going to bring this up too that, our heart’s desire in sharing all of this with you is to remind you of what it looks like to have a marriage after God and to remind you about the extraordinary experiences that you can have with God. When you are able, when you have a clear mind and are sharp and energetic and physically able and you’re walking with the Lord, he’s going to give you experiences and opportunities to do things –

Aaron Smith: Well, the Bible tells us, if you’re faithful –

Jennifer Smith: – and you’ll be prepared and ready for it.

Aaron Smith: If you’re faithful a little, you’ll be faithful as much. Can you be faithful with your body? Can you be faithful with your diet, can you be faithful in the reading of the Word of God? Can you be faithful in the example that you’re trying to set in your home?

Jennifer Smith: So that when he puts a desire in your heart to do something extraordinary, you are ready. You are prepared. You can do it.

Aaron Smith: Capable.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, you have everything. You’re equipped to do that.

Aaron Smith: I want to end with a scripture. It’s in 1 Timothy 4:7-8. It says, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for this present life, and also for the life to come.”
As we talk about physical and physical health and our eating habits, I want to emphasize that those are just small disciplines and small fruits of a disciplined spiritual life, where you desire to grow and mature in your walk as a Christian and in your marriage that’s chasing after God together that you make decisions that are good not just because you want to look better, not just because you want to lose some weight, but because you know that those are fruits of lack of discipline.
We want to just turn that around. If any of you like Jennifer said earlier are just wondering, “Where do I start with this?” I’ve been trying this new method of way of thinking when it comes to growing in areas. It’s just take a baby step. Just do one new thing and try and do it over and over and over again. It might be, next time you go to the grocery store, look for products that don’t have sugar in them. That’s it.
Don’t do a big old diet, if you’re wondering about the Word of God, just do what I’m doing, just read one chapter. Start in Genesis. Read the creation story and just one chapter. Be like, “Oh, I’m going to read this.” Read Proverbs. Figure out what day it is, go to that day in Proverbs, because there’s 31 Proverbs, so if it’s the 20th, go to Proverbs 20 and read Proverbs 20.

Jennifer Smith: Yeah, it’s always full of wisdom.

Aaron Smith: Try and do it everyday. Eventually you’ll find yourself reading more and more and more.

Jennifer Smith: Don’t forget to encourage your spouse along the way.

Aaron Smith: Yeah. We want to thank you guys for watching our video today. If this encouraged you, please hit the subscribe button, and again, don’t forget to hit the bell, so you get notified when we post new videos.

Jennifer Smith: Feel free to leave comments, we love going through those and connecting with you guys. Thank you so much for those of you who have been leaving comments. Again, if anything inspired you today or sparked your memory of something you’ve also experienced in this area of living a healthy lifestyle, please leave us a comment.

Aaron Smith: Maybe even share your own story of spirituality healthiness and physical healthiness. Love you guys and we’ll see you next time.

Jennifer Smith: Bye.

Aaron Smith: Did you enjoy today’s show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageafterGod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

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Cassidy

Never Too Late to Change the World – Interview with Scott Stoutenburg

“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause” (Isaiah 1:17). I recently had the opportunity to interview Scott Stoutenburg, the director of student engagement for Destiny Rescue, and his life story embodies this verse in an incredible way.

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Marriage After God Podcast - Christian Marriage Podcast
Cassidy

From Divorce Papers to Divine Restoration – Interview with Kevin & Bree Bailey

Jennifer and I have witnessed firsthand the incredible restorative power of God. And as Kevin and Bree Bailey share in their testimony, God can take the most broken situations and bring healing and purpose. Their story is a testament of how faith, forgiveness, and perseverance can bring life into a marriage on the brink of divorce.

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Marriage After God Podcast - Christian Marriage Podcast
Cassidy

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

Unity in marriage requires intentionality and reliance on God. Mark and Christine Jewell were recently guests on our podcast and shared their journey of unification. Their story demonstrates the importance of embracing God’s design for marriage, not only as a partnership but as a way to glorify the Lord.

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