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[0:00]  welcome to providence podcast this is chris oswald senior pastor of providence community church thank you so much for listening i'm here with dove cohen say hi dove hey providence we are going to talk about marriage today i think that i don't think i've told many people we had the total nightmare of podcast experience uh something i've been paranoid about forever and that was we talked for about an hour on the subject of marriage things were going well oh yeah i looked down and realized that it wasn't recording and uh boy i felt i felt terrible about that but thank you dove for coming back and uh letting us do this over again uh it's just nice to talk to chris yeah it's nice to nice to be with you we're sitting in our uh warm little office slash what is this place it's an office slash uh snack storage facility and uh yeah i can just grab in some orange juice or something yeah i was thinking about how far i've come in my self-discipline with food because i now sit in the room where the food is kept and i'm still okay like i'm still losing weight that's good well we're going to start with a hymn as we've been doing from the gadsby hymnal and today it's called the wisdom and knowledge of god god's ways are just his counsels wise no darkness can prevent his eyes no thought can fly nor thing can move unknown to him that sits above the cause conceals and by his saints it stands confessed that what he does is ever best wait then my soul submissive wait prostrate before his awful seat amidst the terrors of his rod trust in a wise and gracious god amidst the terrors of his rod trust in a wise and gracious god you know uh it was uh at some point in my teenage years that i realized that for a very long time i was singing all hail the power of jesus name but i wasn't saying prostrate i was saying prostate oh and i didn't know that there was i didn't even know what that word meant i might have heard on a commercial or something i've seen it on tv yeah it took me a long time to realize that for my whole childhood i was singing uh a really inappropriate word into all hail the power of jesus name anyway that's a good hymn this is a good hymn yeah so we're gonna talk about marriage today um and the first thing we've got to discuss as our as our kind of introduction icebreaker here is how we met our wives um some of this feels stale to me we've already talked about all this but basically i met my wife the first day of college college and we um i think we started talking a few weeks into college and she was um she's just you know she's just more extroverted than i am and so i probably wouldn't have talked to her if she didn't talk to me first but she was just very friendly she was the cafeteria click chick when you walk in you know she'd count who came in and check your id and make sure you had the meal pass and all that kind of stuff like the modern costco yeah yeah so she sat there when you walked in and she sat on this little stool and back then girls didn't really wear baseball hats and she wore a baseball hat she was kind of known on campus as the girl who wears a baseball hat okay and so anyway uh wound up wound up going to pizza hut with her uh i don't know how many weeks later we had the 219 breadstick dinner some two waters hours and hours and hours and talk and i remember knowing even just then i was like i'm gonna marry this girl so anyway that's how we met how about you and christine that's great well um christine and i first got connected through e-harmony so uh so online we first met at isaac newton's bar and grill in newtown pennsylvania and similar to you we just we shared a good meal together we both got the chicken mango wrap like completely uncoordinated we both ordered that we thought it sounded good and then we just walked and talked through newtown pennsylvania end up getting these pumpkin spice lattes at starbucks and just sitting in starbucks and people watching and talking together and it was a great first date um and then my love and respect for her just grew from there so that's how we met nice i wonder i wonder if she was at all concerned that you ordered such frou-frou-frou chicken mango wrap and a psl man are you pumpkin spice latte well she she suggested the pumpkin spice lattes i had not frequented starbucks that much back in my like i don't know i mean mid to late 20s yeah i think i wonder if her radar was up a little bit like why is this guy eating mango chicken with me and yeah you know you should have asked you should have asked for the wild boar or something you know impress her yes yeah she just looked in my eyes masculine credentials she yeah she was impressed by you yeah anyway so we're going to talk today about uh mostly talking to men about just a marriage check-in just some good practices related to marriage and uh we're going to use ephesians 5 25 through 33 as our text dub if you want to read that to us yeah sure so ephesians 5 25 33 husbands love your wives as christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies he who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his flesh but nourishes and cherishes it just as christ does the church because we are members of his body therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh this mystery is profound and i'm saying that it refers to christ in the church however each one of you love his wife as himself let the wife see that she respects her husband okay that's great uh it's great it's also heavy yeah a lot in that hymn we read what did it say it says something about god's prostrate before his awful seat and the old way of using awful is how sweet and awful tells us to be as men in our marriages that old way of thinking of awful comes into play like it's an awe-filled kind of thing yeah be christ in a relationship explicitly not in some generic way but to be really like the model of christ in a marriage and that that that fundamentally means uh a call to sacrifice yourself for the for the joy of of the other the eternal joy the eternal good of the other yeah it's it's a sobering serious heavy responsibility weighty responsibility to love your wife as christ loved the church so uh related to that we've got just basic ideas here we're called to sacrifice for our wife um real quickly you mentioned this yesterday in the sermon about how the the man who's an invalid he has this plan he wants to uh he needs someone to take him down and put him in the pool and jesus wants to help him but he's not going to do it that guy's way he's going to do it the way that's the right way according to jesus and i i'm just thoughtful here when it says we are to sacrifice for our wife according to the will and plan of god not merely according to the women wishes of our wives yeah another way to say it would be we are to sacrifice for our wife but not to our wife yes uh we know that's a good point yeah yeah yeah okay we're to pursue our wife's sanctification um how would you define sanctification uh progressive um course of becoming more like christ more like jesus so progressive sanctification progress to become more like christ over time okay from one degree of glory to the next yep all right and we will one day present our wives to the lord uh we are both fans of a lot of what cj mahaney has taught and exemplified and uh related to marriage both in his own marriage but also you know when he teaches on it he talks about studying your wife about making your wife sort of uh a key a primary area of your intellectual interest and attention so forth i sometimes think about how much i've back in my day or at least where i lived it was pretty common to find these old work and it's been the rest of the night gto or something doing projects that were you know um and so they were home but not really home and you know at the end of that uh whatever you know take them five years or whatever to do this beautiful resto on a on a car or something it's like it's like they presented this car to the family it's like look what i did and it's yeah it's like great but um at some point early on in my life i realized that ephesians 5 was telling me i should do that with my wife and that's what jesus did yeah yeah so jesus did with the church and uh and so that requires time and attention so forth but the cool thing is is that at the end i don't just like present that to the world or something i present that to god yeah and i say here i did i tried thanks to your grace in me to leave this gal better than i found her yeah to help her to be more like jesus so forth yeah and i think part of it also is just taking what we're experiencing as men from god his care for us and then expressing that to our wives and passing it along like we are like god is restoring us right uh and so experiencing that receiving that from the lord and then passing it on yeah and that's um we're we you know every every church has a little bit of a particular alignment with other sort of cultural things happening in the in the larger church and i wouldn't say that we're one for one connected to the theobro world or the patriarchy world or anything like that sure but i do think that if people are looking if people that are oriented in that direction are looking for a church providence might be one of the churches that they would they would choose and i always feel like that the great evidence of a young man being like gung-ho about authority and leadership and he's going to make a mess of things is when he doesn't actually have a clear understanding of the grace the work of grace in his own life and how god has patiently and carefully and meticulously trimmed him into the man he is you know yeah work uh young men that don't understand the amount of godly patience that has been exhibited on their behalf by the saints by their parents by right uh by the lord they they don't understand how to sanctify someone else if they themselves haven't really processed carefully how they have been sanctified yeah and so yeah you're talking about like passing down what you're experiencing in your own relationship with the lord when you start being very intellectually convicted but heart convicted you are a work in progress that you know you are a great sinner and need a you know great savior that that really you are nothing without the mercy of god until those things are really in you you're you can get all of the intellectual knowledge of headship and leadership pretty quickly but knowing how to use it in a way that honors god in a way that god actually likes uh requires you to be very aware of your own sanctification journey i guess yeah that's a great point just how it's progressive how patient god has been you know i'm i think paul's um talk about how he's the chief of sinners yeah and how god's been more patient with him than with anyone else just as an example of perfect god's perfect patience with him that's a great point and then you can not only pass along the sanctifying like here's some truth but speaking the truth in love um it's a great point we're still recording by the way oh good good that's encouraging i remembered to check oh i'll try not to go off the rails too bad no i mean this is like we could i mean even if we just talked about sanctification yeah it really is like if you've not thought about this guys you need to parenting helps by the way with a lot of this sure you begin to learn a lot more about how people change when you parent but even just the way that god doesn't god uses all sorts of different ways of sanctifying you sometimes it's by a positive example that that person doesn't even know yeah that that they're being um used by god to convict you of something or encourage you in some way um sometimes it's by god will give you he'll take a um he'll take one layer of a sin off in one season through one kind of stimulus and then there's more of the onion to peel but that's going to be a different thing a completely different thing you know a sickness whatever and he's going to use all these different stimuli to to make this change and you begin to realize you know ephesians 2 we are his poema we are his workmanship um we are his epic poem we are his you know and and what you're really seeing there is is that this master craftsman who created reality is at work in shaping you in a million different ways to to become more like christ if you one of the areas i would encourage men to think about with sanctification is not just that you need saint saving too and all those simplistic platitudes that we talk about where it's like well i'm a sinner too and so on and so forth it's that's true but also think of how god is so masterful and thoughtful and skilled to the way the various ways that he brings your sin to your attention uh brings you into conviction you think you're sorry and then a year later you realize well i was i wasn't as sorry as i thought i was i there's more repentance to be had here and so forth the the carefulness of god the wisdom of god and what that winds up doing in in terms of sanctification fundamentally just leadership spiritual leadership is is it it allows you to see uh uh your the work that you're putting in to help someone else grow in their sanctification it doesn't all have to come at once and in one way it can come across a spectrum of your relationship with them in different seasons in different stimuli in different methods and so forth and like you said if you don't if you're not grateful for the way god has handled you and somewhat aware of it obviously you will really not be ready you're not ready for prime time when it comes to taking care of somebody else yeah and all that all that will engender faith for your wife right like like god has been so patient with me that'll help me be humble it'll help me have faith because i've seen that god's worked in me and so i can trust that god will work in my wife um and just patience and gentleness like we don't have to be the holy spirit right we don't have to hammer our wives with truth um we can be gentle and patient with them as uh as god's a gentle and patient with us yeah and i mean sometimes you hammer them with truth but it doesn't have to be the only thing you use right yeah true yes it's just one of the tools right right and i think that i think that's how god is like right there are down moments and times where god has just just flattened me yes not many you know and i relatively speaking to how much i deserve that but still he does to not think that you need to and that's young men it's not so much that i'm you know you're it's easy to you know think that me at my age i'm just a compromised guy and you know i'm tired and i don't have any zeal anymore anything um but no the actually the answer is is that when you're young you know two notes you know and and you keep playing those over and over and over again and you think something's gonna happen it's like well go get go get some more notes man yeah like go get some more tools and and the way we get those tools fundamentally is by just reflecting on the varied kindness of god and the way that he's yeah walk with us the experience in god's care god's personal care for us it's good and and that's really what the point of marriage is to a great degree uh you've got this quote from cj yep so a lot of the concept we're going to talk about a lot of quotes from cj's book sex romance and the glory of god um we're going to use today as foundational thoughts for our talk but uh on uh he says uh marriage between a man and a woman is meant to reflect the relationship between christ and the church it's about being genuinely united in a strong godly intimate relationship something of the selfless love care and sacrifice that jesus shows toward the church it's supposed to be evident in you as you relate to your wife yep amen yep now i need uh this isn't in our outline but i want to drop a post mill uh we're gonna go off an outline yeah can you imagine i get hit on that i want to drop a bit of a post mill perspective on some of this so and i think this will help at a couple of layers and one of the first layers would be something like how do i know what the priority of my wife's sanctification ought to be like you know my wife's my wife in particular she's the center in a lot of different areas you know uh just a very no she you know all people have lots of sins yeah and you know figuring out what to bring to someone's attention and whatnot um figuring out how to triage these things yeah uh it's like complex there's probably two main schools of thought the first one would be like what what is bothering me the most right so uh i'm gonna i'm gonna aim for my wife's sanctification based on those things that she does that i don't like right okay that's one possibility right that's one way of figuring out what to prioritize another would be something like um it's a little bit better would be something like what what is most harmful to her you know um that that could be another way yeah but i think the proper way the proper biblical way is is that you're supposed to be walking together on a mission marriage is actually fundamentally going all the way back to the beginning about the accomplishment of a very specific mission sure to to rule and subdue by being fruitful multiplying and so when you are on a team and the mission is defined then you can look around at the strengths and weaknesses of the team members as it relates to the mission and say my wife has 10 my wife's flaws like that but it's imagine i think the godly biblical way of thinking about this stuff is which one is going to affect the mission the most clearly and a lot of times that's fear for women it's not always fear but a lot of times that's that's the one and sure first peter three talks about that but anyway uh i there's a few things about this mission thing that i think are important the first is if your marriage isn't about something more than your marriage you're not you're in an idolatrous marriage yes and and and you and you could go broad and say our marriage is to glorify god lots of christians say that well that's almost too broad to be actionable and almost too broad to kind of clearly give you a sense of priority and help you know what to say yes to and what to say no to and so on so forth it needs to be a little narrower than that um you know i i think that i think that the thing that's worked for us my wife and i is we were very um comfortable making our children a priority over other people so first of all that's a real obvious mission like raise these kids to love jesus right keep them safe you know protect them from the enemy and so on right so that's a mission but i think for us the the second tier mission was always just been to to use our marriage to support the church and you know i don't think that's mostly vocational i mean i can see why it would be easier for us to realize that that's important you know that's part of my job right but i also just angela and i to this day like probably would say you know the the most important advice we could give anybody in life and certainly those that are married is use your life to serve god's bride use your life to serve the thing god loves the most and you'll always you'll always wind up being happy that you did that yeah yeah so anyway i yeah i think that like you know all of these marriage principles actually if we don't um if we don't encapsulate them into some sort of a mission they almost become sort of like um idolatrous like how do we have the marriage that makes us most fulfilled or that makes us the happiest yeah and so on yeah that's a great so i think all these things are really good but but it's important to remember that the first marriage occurred within a uh mission fulfillment kind of a idea and that jesus is as the second adam and and the church is the second eve in some respects his bride and that god gave jesus the church as a means of ruling and subduing and fulfilling the original creation mandate you know times 10 i don't mean to say just the creation mandate sure but that jesus as the new and better adam has an a wife and and that they are on mission together and so i would just say like mission is actually extremely important when you're thinking in particular about how to make choices in general in life you need to understand what your mission is and then when you're thinking of like how do i help this person grow in sanctification well how do you know what to pick it's like well is there something that's evidently uh related to the mission what's the mission so for for me you know um there have been things that i didn't prioritize that might have been a little bit more aggravating to me about my wife when there were other things that were like dude if you don't to my wife if you don't figure this out we can't do what we're supposed to do right and how do i help you figure this out and vice versa so that's been helpful for us too because it doesn't become just a let's talk about the things that annoy each other about each other right and it doesn't also become some sort of like uh moral high ground where i'm like i'm really really just i'm working for your best and you know so on it can be a little bit more concrete than that and just say what is uh what are we called to do and what about us right now would prevent us from doing that well unless we fixed it so it's a great point it's a great point so that gets us to the priority of marriage and this is i think related to to all of this um just just the importance of of making your marriage kind of a central thing not because it is the central thing but i would say i would argue that because it's a central tool yeah but anyway this is a great quote yeah so how common it is today for people to say things like my kids are the most important thing in the world to me well guys for you and me as christian husbands it's just unacceptable attitude but it's a clearly unbiblical and this is cj speaking he's saying a husband's love for his wife as periton preacher john wing put it must be the most dear intimate precious and entire that heart can have toward a creature none but the love of god is above it none but the love of ourselves as fellow to it all the love of others is inferior to it in short love of husband and wife for one another should plainly exceed in intensity and scope all other human loves yeah and and essentially i i see i would say this is a probably both a male and female problem your spouse needs to be clear in particular with those things are not more important and that you don't love them more than you love and i think that uh i think that it's sort of like none of very few of us actually do love our jobs when we love our wives but our jobs will ask things of us right sure and uh and very few women actually love their kids more than they love their husbands right but the kids will the kids will ask time and there's no dignity to you know the good child they have no and so they're happy to ask and so but i will say it's real easy to start noticing your wife not actually doesn't seem like she really is as interested in you as she is in taking care of the kids or the things she has going or so on sure sure wives will feel the same about their husbands whether especially during demanding seasons of work or when the chiefs are making a playoff run or you know back in my home area hunting season but you know what i mean though yeah it's i don't think that it's necessarily usually true right that uh that the spouse isn't number one but really this becomes pretty important in the sense of if the other individual who is is normally reasonable and sober-minded if your wife is normally reasonable and sober-minded and she's saying it feels to me like x y and z are more important right then you need to figure out how to adjust yeah men uh will often not say that to their wives but they will feel it and the wives and they they will often not say it because they feel like they're being creepy or not creepy but they're being selfish because the thing that men typically feel like they're competing with are the children right right and and so a kind of a common thing like this would be um for women it would look something like it's 8 p.m and you have no sexual energy left you know at all and you've spent all your energy on the kids and so forth and you just you know your wife yeah and you're you're the wife and you're just like uh i'm sorry i've done all this i can't you know and so forth a guy i'll hear that x number of times eventually would be reasonable to make the conclusion that my kids are more important to my wife than than i am and it's the same with dudes do the same thing and with right let me i gotta check my email or whatever yeah yeah so it really needs to be this sense of um you have to be careful you don't want to be whiny about it and you don't you don't want to make everything about you all the time right um and the truth is is that when my wife does sometimes put my kids first it's for my glory ultimately right like if if she does great things with my kids like that's i'm happy about that my kids and if i kill myself work 80 hours a week it's really for my wife in many respects right and so i would just say that it's very important that each spouse feel that the other one is putting them first right my wife is the most important i read this book i think it just be reminded and uh um angela and i have noticed over the years that sometimes just winning the approval of someone other than your spouse feels better than winning the approval of your spouse because you already have it right and so like little opportunities like you know to do things can pop up like a project at work or something like that and now you've got this other place to like win some approval and impress some people right right and it's like you you think well you know i i didn't know this is conscious of course but right you think uh well you know i've already got my wife's approval it would really be nice to get somebody else's approval right you know and and so you just have to watch out for for these things and understand that you're you know we're sinners the other the other piece of this is to know that this may be something you're feeling and you might not have words for it uh you may just feel like you're not number one to your spouse at the time and uh you need to in a non-violent uh meaning not accusatory way right just take some time and just say hey i feel like this is going on i don't think you're to blame or anything right i'm just letting you know that it's starting to feel this way if we could make some adjustments so that you know it feels like i'm your number one and you're my number one there's a way to do this that doesn't accuse it doesn't make the person responsible for how you feel exactly uh i would just say like keep a short leash on this one this can build the resentment and it can create sort of parallel lives um that are full of just all sorts of nastiness yeah you got to advocate for your marriage like you said you got if marriage is so key to our mission in our in our in our lives and in our families um we've got to advocate for them and there's nothing wrong with speaking up and saying hey this is how i'm feeling yeah in a gentle kind yeah way and also just to say like i'm not even arguing that i'm right right i'm just communicating this is what i this is how i'm perceiving right right good good all right so um we have a quote there we go we have a quote about um stewarding our marriage so if our marriage is is such a weighty sober high priority in our lives we make sure our stewarding our marriage as well um so there's this quote uh cj says he says my marriage will not grow as it should but i do not attend to it consistently under god's loving sovereignty i not my wife and the keeper of the garden that is my marriage it's very hard what it means to be a god-appointed leader in my home so just just the like as as the man as the husband um this is i own this is my responsibility to take care for to tend to to like a garden um watch over um be the keeper of of my marriage yeah and and you know of course uh of course there have been many times when my wife will come to me and say i think maybe we should do this or you know we should make this change or so forth that's great yeah yeah but there's no point in which that should become expected of her or that i should rely on her to do that i should be the one who's keeping track of the machine like i should be the one who's making sure that it's okay and i should be thinking about it enough to to understand where we are how we can improve yeah we should be the primary initiators in our marriage yeah and and we should be the ones who who think about it more in some respects uh as a as a thing you know uh it's it's okay it's like god put us in this institution it's kind of like a machine it needs maintenance it has you know parts and different aspects to it men need to have a kind of a you know mechanics uh proficiency with the dynamics of their marriage you know when i buy a car it's glorious if you and this happens sometimes this is kind of why some of us like buying cars from garmin people you buy a car from someone they give you a three ring notebook of all the maintenance records yeah it's all like oh you know we had a timing chain put in at this thing and so forth and this guy or whatever he's like tracked all this because he wants to understand you know where he is with this with this thing he's been entrusted right sure and you can't take your marriage for granted man you can't yeah you can't drive your car without checking at everyone's well you can't take your marriage for granted men need to be the ones who are really paying attention to that and if you have the constantly whining about one of the big things is like that would put her at ease so she would be like he's got this yeah or are you the you know are you are you the guy sometimes i get into particular modes and driving that are really distracted and i'm thinking about a million things and uh when my wife yells at me in those times while i'm driving it's kind of like well what do i expect i i'm nothing about my approach to driving right now is communicating diligence competency right you can relax you know and so in those moments like well i kind of deserve it because i'm not showcasing you know a competency level right right if you will just grow into a pattern of being the guy who is reliably coming to your wife and saying hey i noticed we don't i noticed we've been looking at our phones a little bit too much at night or hey i noticed this or this if you're the one who keeps saying i'm noticing yeah they'll relax they will relax and you will you will much appreciate that environment but a lot of you guys are you know you feel like harassed when your wife has concerns and first of all she may or may not be right in her concerns but really what you need to understand is what's going on there she would love to put her seat back like my wife does in the car when i'm paying attention my wife's an instant recline girl she trusts you well yeah sometimes anyway uh your wife would love to do that with many things including your marriage sure uh you just need to demonstrate i'm paying attention i'm reading the marriage books i'm thinking right so now the bar has been set how do we do this right like practically like how do we keep our marriage how do we how do we tend to our marriage uh we've got some practicals here no it's you've got it all wrong here but if if if you marry the wrong one you just divorce or get another one and then you'll that one won't work probably either it takes like five tries isn't that isn't that the way the world does this i think that is the way the world does the way that they do it is is that i want the perfect marriage but i don't want to like put in the work and so change myself so i'll just keep pulling the uh the marriage um slot machine until i get until i get i land on cherries or whatever the thing is no that's not how we do it yes we do that way or we could or we could look at three areas of communication this is something um so the main idea earlier be in touch with each other state again we got some practical questions you can um so being now uh what is your purpose where do you feel god calling you to grow for right now um just all good questions that where are you in your cycle yes yes that's that's a very good question to know about they're after that you don't have to ask you can pay attention to that one too guys you don't have to ask so you can all we can all download the same app so yes so there's all these questions you can ask your wife to to be proactive into so that she can put the seat down in her car and relax a little bit and know that you're keeping tabs on what's going on the relationship yep you're watching out for her that you're looking and you're looking out for her good um you can ask her how are things with the kids going i feel like things at church are going uh practically like do you need anything around the house right now do you need like a gadget or like some maintenance like you're seeing really one of this shelf in the kitchen so i'm like what do you want for christmas and she's like well i want a shelf uh in the kitchen so i could put my whatever stuff up there uh and so just what do you need to make your life better and easier around the house pause there for a second this is a big doug wilson lesson i really like and that is if you want your wife to manage your home don't be as stingy yeah i don't know how he talks about it but basically yeah you know give what you need doing things well requires certain kind of tools yeah and of course we want to be thrifty and we want our wives to be thrifty as well but also you need to like understand if you want your wife to do the thing god's created her to do you gotta you gotta gotta fund it yeah it's like you show up at work and they've got the laptop where you're ready to go on day one yeah you give the tools that you need to be successful in your job they're managing the house they're watching the kids doing whatever yeah um they need the tools too so don't be afraid to get them a dust buster or something i wouldn't recommend that for mother's day uh that didn't go over so well um let's for another podcast so all right um you can ask you know is there anything that you're struggling with right now uh is there anything that's on your mind now that you just want to talk about that i've and all that assume you need to have a context for communication a few different ideas like i'm away from the table take 10 15 minutes and talk and just say kids we are going a better way to say it but each other and we're gonna do that just keep telling them that over and over again i remember one time when i was a youth pastor we and i went to this marriage conference and all the youth found out about it and thought we were you know having a problem okay you know our marriage problems we're going to a marriage conference we just kept telling them like no like it's just something you do you just you just do this stuff you don't wait for there to be a problem and uh they still they still didn't believe us anyway as we're driving away uh it was like uh a bunch of kids came to the house and said jokingly you know we hope you come back stronger and anyway it was pretty cute but what an example that's setting for the kids in the youth group and for for your kids as well and for anyone who's saying kids like we need 10 50 minutes just to talk and be in touch and yeah like that's part of the marriage is setting a great example for your kids they'll carry that on in the future yeah and it makes them feel so much safer yeah when they're married and we we tell our kids like mom and dad are in a club you're not invited you can't join it ever like we are in a club and uh you know we wouldn't like throw it in their face all the time but at the same time there was this sense of we you guys you guys if you know what's good for you and even if you don't right we are going to take some time here and i do like the idea of doing it after dinner just because it's not you're not so tired right right yeah i we didn't do that i think that's a good idea we would usually do it in bed yes that's the other that's the next bullet point right is before sleep in bed together taking 15 20 30 minutes just talking about the day and about who you ran into who you talk to who you care about all that kind of stuff the sweet things are context for communication just look at the calendar what are we what are we doing this week uh read something and pray together um a little plug for uh if you're a younger couple uh i think when sinners say i do by dave harvey is an excellent book to go through uh just to ground yourself in the gospel and applying the gospel in your marriage for seasoned couples he's got a book called i still do uh which is an excellent um real season mature book uh on marriages that are 10 15 years and going um so i'd i'd recommend those two books if you're you know looking for something to read together uh date nights are a great opportunity to get together and talk and obviously have you know an hour two three just context for communication uh and then throughout the day as needed guys like don't be afraid to like take five minutes or two minutes to just text your wife be like is everything okay everything going well i think that really can cause a good sense of care within your wives yeah i um i we we are big advocates of the book getting things done you probably read that i haven't read that you've never read the art of execution or whatever it's uh david allen i think and it's called gtd and getting things done yeah anyway uh so we one thing i thought was helpful early on was we actually read um you don't have to use that book you might have better ideas but we read a productivity book together that uh that sort of in a sense creates a home system like a vocabulary for tracking and like staying on top of things so we kind of created some kind of like a common culture for productivity yeah it's like this is how we are this is how we do things and of course we're different people and do it a little differently but anyway we did that early on first first year maybe and to this day i can just tell um when my wife has too much in her head and there's just there's just not like she's just swimming in things like obligations and that the brain doesn't do a great job of sorting through priorities so it could be like you need batteries for the smoke alarm and you need you know you know you something very very very important also and your brain's just like holding all this stuff right so one of the things i i do with my wife uh whenever it just seems like it's time is we'll go somewhere and i'll just bring like a laptop and a bunch of a legal pad and i'm just like start and uh i just it goes real slow like yeah sure yeah you know probably as much as you can you know when you write all this stuff down start putting it on your calendar like yeah start getting a bunch of it done even then yeah so we'll spend two three hours just kind of bleeding her brain out and getting okay this is all that you've been holding on to right right and uh what that winds up doing is is it winds up realize you realize that a lot of things you've been concerned about you can just knock out that moment right um right anyway so getting things done i i think it's i would i would like you to read that actually because i'd like you to see if you think it's a good one or not i'm sure it's but it's a real system that one is a real it's almost like a diet book like it's almost like this is how you do productivity got it for us it was we needed that kind of thing but yeah i think giving each other um setting aside bigger chunks of time to just sort of turn the other person into almost a stenographer and say i will listen you start talking and let's just figure out what's going on in your mind yeah so forth and isn't that just a practical way of counting each other's burdens yeah yeah just get everything out and let's figure out how to get done yep absolutely so great all right so um that's creating context for communication uh second way to tend to our marriages practically and care for care for our wives is uh through acts of kindness thoughtfulness and service so main idea there is just show kindness thoughtfulness and service towards your wife do things that demonstrate practically that you care about her that she's special to you that you love her that she's number one in your life um so um i think date nights are such a have been such a blessing to to me and christine big ones little ones so you know like valentine's day is coming up that's the kind of big one but little ones just like let's go out let's get some tea or some coffee or whatever let's just sit and talk some mango chicken wraps mango chicken wrap yes let's go back to isaac newton's uh they don't have to be expensive right you can go for a walk in the park yeah uh in the springtime that's great uh right now it's just it's you go to you would die if you did that right now but yeah yeah we can't do that right now but um but yeah uh they can be big it can be little uh i've already talked about um other acts and thoughtfulness services in midday checking um how you doing to your wife if you can uh break out you know from work for the for them for five minutes guys there's this really interesting little trick you can do uh you can create a shortcut on your iphone or you can just put a calendar date uh by the way share a calendar with your wife yes can you talk about that in a minute sure okay but anyway so there's this thing i do where i set these little shortcuts on my iphone and they just they just notify me yeah um a couple times in the day check in yeah and then i may or may not have actually programmed them to send automated messages uh periodically but uh may or may not have happened but the big thing is just like you thought of her yeah yeah and it just even when it when it comes up on my phone i don't always check in you know i right it's not every day but i i do use it as a way of remembering and you know i think for us again i want to give everything i can away that's helpful something like two o'clock you know you're going to see them in three hours let's say right right right something like that you get the fires warming up a little bit you know uh a little bit in advance you know catch what you're saying yeah yeah so maybe maybe a two a nice 2 p.m and you know two is kind of a draggy kind of time yeah to pick me up yeah get excited the night uh the calendar thing yeah i just am surprised by the number of people who don't do this share a calendar yeah so if you have an iphone i don't know i don't know android but iphone it's super easy well we share our we actually use google calendar but we share it on iphone okay but yeah i don't i don't know how many of you do this i remember as a 20 year old thinking it must be a terrible life to have everything in your life scheduled out you were probably looking forward to having a day of everything scheduled out i remember thinking like there's no way i can be me if i have a calendar and so i quickly realized like that's not going to be helpful to people or to the lord or so forth but yeah we we have a we have a shared calendar i feel like most people probably know to do this but i just want to double check and make sure everybody yeah understood like yeah you should definitely have a shared calendar yeah and just a plug for sunday night going over the next two weeks together or so uh to make sure you're on the same page for what are we doing on wednesday this week or thursday this week yeah yeah we do that too yeah it's a good practice yeah all right um notes cards letters like i'm i i'm pretty simple guy i get post-it notes i get these super sticky post-it notes and i'll write a quick i love you nice and put it above her bed or whatever that that's a nice little thing to do just show the practice we care um gifts um again little uh is great like get what's her favorite candy like what's get her a coffee get her a snack get her get her flower from costco or whatever that when you start doing this stuff always be righteous in how she responds like sometimes she'll she'll be like evidently grateful but sometimes she's she's a dork too you know like like sometimes she won't and so what you'll see is guys get all bit out of shape they'll they'll do this thing right and expect immediate you know feedback right no just keep doing this be faithful tend the garden yeah just keep doing this stuff and and uh it doesn't have to be um my wife's taste has changed actually a lot over the years things that she wouldn't have really appreciated in the past she does now and not gluten-free cookies yeah yeah yeah anyway all right so last category so we've talked about communication we talked about acts of kindness service thoughtfulness and physical affection main idea there just being a physical affection helps reinforce and celebrate the unity of your marriage also communicates love and care for your wife show your wife physical affection in big and small ways she will appreciate it yep yep so just always be touching yeah a bt yeah um so christine she appreciates big hugs um so sometimes i just my my daughter she you can all make fun of me for this she goes like huggy kissy huggy kissy yeah sometimes i just look at christine i'm like huggy kissy yeah like you want to hug right now and sometimes she just really appreciates that yeah i i'm a big hug guy too i i and i think that at some point i realized you know you're not going to have this person to hug forever you know and you know just being understanding that and and understanding like well gosh like there's going to be a day when i wish this hug was i wish i had taken twice as long with this hug than i did so that's good yeah longer hugs are better yeah and then for um talking about physical intimacy like real romantic physical intimacy the sex romance in the glory of god cj does a nice job talking about that i'm sure there's other books you know like intended for pleasure and things like that which talk about talk about sex and yeah intended for pleasure is kind of our recommended book but yeah uh but cj cj's big push is touch your wife's heart and mind before you touch her body uh so that's what all these practicals are aiming towards but yeah yeah that's what he said yeah no i agree i agree so um i just touch it all all the time there you go all right so uh to wrap things up um let's think generationally for a second uh there's this quote it's from cj it says what we do today can influence many people many generations and many tomorrows we've already talked about it like we want to have marriages that our kids can look at that are look at yeah and say well like my parents had a great marriage yep and they that made me as a kid that made me feel safe and secure and i just felt good about my parents loved each other and so yeah there really are very few world changing things uh average people like us can do that are more significant and more pound for pound impactful than just having like you said historically great marriage it winds up being the tree that shades a lot of things and people and blesses a lot of things and people it winds up being a big deal yeah that's awesome so yeah so that's what we want in providence we want historically great marriages what marriages in which our wives are growing our kids feel secure in that that bring us joy uh and one one point i really want to hammer home is that we're not stuck in the patterns of the past so if you're in a current practice in a marriage that um it's just is lagging in some of this stuff is not as strong as some of the stuff jesus died to forgive you and to free you so that you could repent and you could grow in your marriage and in caring for your wife uh and then also um we we're not stuck in the patterns of like maybe we had parents that did have historically great marriages and we look at them we're like wow like thank god for my parents marriage but if they didn't we through our sanctified imagination we can imagine what our marriage can look like now yes and we can think i want that kind of marriage and i can by god's grace i'm going to build that kind of marriage with the help of the holy spirit um that is i'm going to pass on to my kids uh and to future generations who to look at and say wow like my my parents had a great marriage uh we're not stuck in what where we are today or where our parents were or anything like that absolutely you know we've you and i have talked over the years about like just different distinctives for providence and one of the ones we've done is that we were just we talked about we're we're unashamedly focused on families yeah yeah and of all of that means and a lot of it does have you know parenting implications but fundamentally your phrase uh historically great marriage that's that's probably the number one thing we as a church can do to bless the kingdom of god uh is i don't know number one probably not right right right but i mean it's a huge piece uh is to help people have historically great marriages but again i'm telling you don't come to me and say my marriage isn't great if you don't have a great mission for your marriage like i would just i will tell you immediately you come back to me when you know what you're supposed to do with your marriage because well what's going to happen is you're hearing all this stuff and if you're not thinking mission you're thinking me then you know all of your spouse's weaknesses are going to feel personal and so on and so forth you get that mission right and say we know what we're here for i know there are families in our church i don't think i should mention them but that have really turned corners in their whole lives by just saying you know what we're just going to go all in and serve the church and that's just it that's just all we're going to be about we're just going to serve and it changed their marriage it changed you know not that it was bad before but it it it did something to their whole life right right so again yeah make sure you got this mission clear as you work on your marriage yeah it's great all right and um just just to make the connection always to the gospel you know because of jesus we are forgiven for our sin we're kind of righteous in christ we're indwelt with the holy spirit it's because of him we can choose to cultivate our marriage for the glory of god the good of our wife and our family and our own joy and we do this again not to be kind of righteous in christ because we are kind of righteous in christ because we are receiving god's care for us in christ um and it's just it's just a glorious thing to to build a great marriage yes and amen yes and amen well thank you dove thank you chris hey we're still recording that's good all right we made it all right well um we're gonna come back at some point i'm i'm headed to the philippines in a couple weeks i guess i have one i want to do with you on self-control so we'll we'll uh maybe do that next time sounds good all right thank y'all bye bye bye