EP 45. The Formula for a Successful Marriage PT 1

Foreign.

Welcome to the Married and Love it podcast.

We are Greg and Linda Smith, your host from Raleigh, North Carolina.

It's great that you are taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to our weekly podcast.

The goal of our podcast is to provide you with a weekly dose of marriage teaching to help you stay focused on your marriage.

See it as freshening up your marriage, preventive maintenance, a marriage tune up or fan in the flames of romance, love and passion.

Well, you can even call it continuing education.

We will be covering everything that has to do with your marriage, including hot topics like sex, communication, love and much, much more.

Our teachings are based on Christian principles plus over 47 years of marriage and ministry experience.

We want to help you make your marriage great by teaching you how to be married and love it.

It is an honor and privilege to have you.

Jo hey, thanks for joining us today.

And we are here to give you your weekly dose of Married and love It.

And that's to help strengthen your marriage.

Thanks for participating in that.

I have to commend you because you're investing in your marriage.

That's right.

And today's episode, we're going to be talking about the formula for a successful marriage.

I am glad that you did join in for this episode because I'm excited about what we're going to talk about.

We had already been planning to do the topic that we're working on, God's formula for success for your marriage.

But with recent activity that's been going on in the world, in particular Charlie Kirk and his wife Erica.

Now, I'm not going to talk about politics and what you may think about them or whatever, that lay that aside.

But one thing about Charlie and Erica that they highlighted and it's come out a lot is their marriage.

They had only been married for four years, two kids, and he's running this worldwide ministry impacting thousands and thousands of people.

But he still made time for his marriage.

It was a priority, him and his wife and his two daughters and, and he talked about that.

And even when he would get around young people, these college students, he would say, you know what, you need to get married and you need to have a family.

So to him, family was important.

But you know what, it's in God's word for you to have a marriage, to be married.

He doesn't make you get married, but he, he wants you to have a good marriage and he wants you to have something like Charlie and, and Erica had.

Now, yours might be a little different flavor or what's going on, but there.

He Wants you to be married and love it.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, we're going to be teaching how to do that.

So what I'm.

What we're going to do is we're going to do our formula to having a godly marriage, the marriage God wants you to have successful.

But I want to let you know that Linda and I want you to have what we have, 48 years coming up.

11-12-40.

Remember that date we cut?

We take cash, check, or credit cards.

There you go.

But we've been through a lot of stuff.

This last 13, 14 years has not been a picture of what you see for Charlie and Erica because we've had all sorts of stuff.

Come again?

Our relationship's been great, but we've had the marriage busters.

The marriage busters hit.

But you know what?

We're still having a marriage affair.

We're still in love with one another.

Yeah.

We still can aggravate the daylights out of one another.

Yeah.

But we're still married.

We're doing this.

And God told us to develop successful families and help them reach the world through their success.

And that's why you're listening, because we want to help you what God wants for your marriage.

We're going to go into that on this episode.

But first, I just want to reiterate what our mission is, and that is to strengthen your marriage.

If it's a good marriage, we want to strengthen your marriage.

If your marriage is stale, we want to freshen up your marriage.

If you're hurting, your marriage is dying.

We want to heal that.

We want to bring it back to life.

Because God can do that.

With God, anything is possible.

That's right.

He'll have some things for you to do, but you can do it.

We don't want you to give up on your marriage.

And I know there's probably people that saw Charlie and.

And Eric on screen.

They're going, oh, my God, we can never have that.

Or, that's not real.

It is real.

It's real and you can have it, but it takes work.

He was purposeful.

He was intentional.

Some things we're going to talk about on this episode.

We want to stop divorce.

Linda was getting ready to leave me.

We.

I mean, we weren't getting divorced right then.

She was.

It was the start.

You could say, yeah, but God healed that.

And God can heal whatever you're going through in your life and in your marriage.

And if you're not married, you want to prepare people for marriage and what work our goal is, is to make marriage great again.

Because the world is attacked and marriages don't get married.

Put it off all this, oh, just divorce this person.

Move in for a while, then didn't do this and do that.

God wants to make marriage great again.

And that's what our mission is.

Our mission is to develop successful families and see those families impact their world.

Because you know what?

A happy and loving marriage is a source of light.

That's it.

The love of God, of love.

And it brings hopes and it's an example for other couples to learn from, just like Charlie and or Erica in their marriage and other marriages.

They're not the only happy marriage around, but that's what God wants to have for you.

And we're looking forward through Married and love it.

Working on some classes we're looking at doing online or zoom classes or maybe local here in Raleigh, we're working on a book and some other materials to help people have a successful marriage.

So stay tuned for that because we've got a lot of good ideas we're going to be working on.

So let's go ahead and get into what we're going to talk about tonight on how you can have a successful marriage and what God's formula is.

And actually, it's real simple.

All right, so hold on.

It is.

It says the formula for successful marriage.

Yes.

So first of all, every formula, whatever it may be, has a creator or a designer.

And if you take the instructions or the directions that this creator or designer has laid out before you, you're going to be successful.

You know, maybe it's a weight loss formula or a sales program, or maybe it's a formula to start a business.

You know, just about everything in life has some sort of formula.

So with this in mind, we want to bring forth that God is the creator of our formula for a successful marriage.

That's right.

I mean, that's what happened to us, right?

Yeah.

I mean, that.

The God factor, after all, you think about it, he created marriage.

And he.

With Adam and Eve.

Yeah.

That's the first thing.

He created marriage.

Man should not be left alone.

That's right.

He brought forth the prime rib.

That's right.

His beautiful bride.

Right.

He had to.

He was like, whoa, man, it was a good thing.

That's how we get the.

That's how we get the word woman.

Did y' all know that in that name?

Oh, man.

Woman.

So back right there in the Garden of Eden, God created marriage.

And then another example is when Jesus, he was involved in a wedding.

He was involved in Marriage, when he changed, when he turned the water into wine.

So, you know, there's things, and it's all throughout the Bible, the different marriages, but these are just a couple to, to look at.

And episodes one through three, Greg and I talk about how God helped us to stay together.

We incorporated the God factor.

We let the formula that God had designed for us and our marriage and that's what brought us back together.

That's a lot of the foundation that we work off of.

And you know, we can truly say we are married and love it.

And you know, like Greg said, It's been almost 48 years and we can still say day we are married and love it.

Yes.

And you know, we use the Bible for our foundation.

And you may say, well, I don't know about the Bible, but you know, the Bible is just an instruction manual for us to use.

I mean, it's God's word, but he has things laid out in principles that almost all other marriage books are built off of and out.

They're non Christian.

They may get into some other funky things because the Bible has kind of some moral standards it's following.

But I tell you what, if you base your marriage on the Bible and God's word, you're going to have more fun and you're not going to have guilt and all these worries because God wants you to have a hot marriage.

He wants you to have wild, wild sex with your woman or your husband and have fun and be enjoyable at the same time.

Be able to walk in love with one another and go out and hold hands and just enjoy life together and pursue your goals and dreams.

And he teaches you how to do that in the Bible.

And that's what we're going to move into now.

So here's his base, here's his formula on how to do that.

But he starts off with his directions.

And it's like this is the directions on the bottle, so to speak, that we're going to follow.

Yeah.

Instructions.

Yes.

Now we like this verse here.

It's Matthew 7, 24, 27.

And it's prayer phrased for marriage and love it purposes.

All right, okay.

It says therefore every marriage.

And I think there it says man, but we're putting marriage in there, says every marriage who hears these words of mine, God's word and acts upon them may be compared to a wise marriage which built its house upon the rock.

That's a strong foundation.

That's going to be these four parts of the formula we're going to talk about.

You build your marriage on that and it's a rock.

And the marriage busters came and burst against that house.

All of us go through the marriage busters.

It can be having kids.

That's not a bad marriage buster.

But it.

It comes against your relationships if you let it.

Sickness, disease, financial problems, in laws, all those types of things come knocking.

You can hear me knocking on the desk, knocking at your door, wanting to pull your marriage down.

It says in the marriage busters came and burst against that house.

And yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.

God's formula for success.

And every marriage who hears these words, that's the word of God again, and doesn't act upon them, will be like a foolish marriage which built its house upon the sand.

And the marriage busters burst against that house and.

And great was its fall.

Now, here's an example of not listening to what we're taught.

About a year before Linda and I started separating or getting into that mode, I was having my Bible study.

Prime time, we call it prime time.

That's what me and Linda call our Bible study.

We learned that years ago.

And I actually keep a lot of my prime time notebooks, journals, if you want to call that.

And I happen to find one the other day, and I went back and it was a year before.

I think it was around 84, 85, somewhere back then.

And I had my prime time, and I wrote down, I read from the marriage book Forever My Love.

And that was a book talking about for a man, how he loves his wife.

Now, it's ironic that I was reading that book, put notes in my prime time, and a year later, Linda was saying, I'm not coming back home.

We're going to separate.

What happened is I read that book because I would always tell her, I'm going to read the books.

And I probably read it.

But you know what?

I didn't act on it.

If I would have done what that book said, it may have changed the whole situation.

It went one ear and out the other earth.

So are you telling me that you had the formula?

Yes.

But you didn't follow the.

I didn't follow the instructions, and you.

Didn'T do anything about it.

You just had it sitting there.

I read it, yeah.

And it says in James, you got to be a hearer and a doer.

Okay, so I heard it, but I didn't do it.

So that's what it's saying in this scripture, man.

You can actually go through the motion, say, I'm going to read this book.

You can listen to this podcast and say, man, that is the most awesome podcast, which we would agree with that most awesome podcast on marriage.

But if you don't take it and apply it and begin to practice it, that's the key.

Things may not turn out good for you.

So it says you don't want to be like a foolish marriage which builds your house upon.

Builds your marriage upon the sand.

And the marriage busters burst against that marriage or house and great was its fall.

You don't want that to happen because the enemy is going to try to steal, kill and destroy and take away what God's given you.

Yep.

Well, before we move on then, we shared a little bit about our mission statement about what our desires to see.

We want to see you be married and love.

Yes.

So we have a few announcements before we move on, and one of them would be, if you'd like to get our newsletter, just click on the link that's going to be in our show notes and it'll take you right to a landing page that you can give us your email and we'll get you all set up.

We send out our newsletter about once a week.

We'd love for you to take this episode and once from the past and share it with your friends, share it with your family.

Everybody knows somebody that is married or is going to be married or, you know, wants to be married.

Share this episode with them.

Yeah, it's easy.

I mean, it's a great, easy episode.

It's great information.

Something that maybe you as mom and dad, if you're mom and dad, you have children that are married or grandchildren they were marrying, they're got lots of questions about marriage, but they don't want to come to you when.

Well, then hand them our card or scan the code in and yeah, give it to him to listen to while they're working out in the gym or driving back and forth to work or school, whatever the case may be.

Yeah.

What Linda was saying about sharing the episode and stuff, you know, if you're getting something out of this or even reading another, a good book on marriage or something, and you know somebody's got some problems, maybe you need to step out of your comfort zone and say, hey, you know what?

I read this good book and here's how it helped my marriage.

I listened to this good podcast and here's how that helped my marriage.

See, God's calling you.

You are his hands extended.

And when you use these tools, that's the ripple effect.

And you're helping people by what God did for you.

And your marriage.

So, you know, if we don't share some of this stuff, and we may be missing it, if we don't say, hey, listen to this, read this, watch that, listen to the little voice.

Because what you do, your obedience could change somebody's marriage, can change their whole.

Life and all of the even generations to come.

Yeah, really.

So maybe you got to step out of your comfort zone.

But, hey, Lynn and I started doing these podcasts, and especially in the ministry through the years, we get out of our comfort zone all the time, but your God's hands extended.

Now let's go ahead and get into God's formula for success for your marriage.

And there's four things we're going to look at here.

But here's our base scripture, and you probably heard us talk about it before.

Ecclesiastes 9, 9 through 10.

Again, this is the married and love it version to get it more applicable to what we're talking about.

It says, relish and enjoy life with the spouse that you love each and every day of your life.

You know, that's what we saw with Charlie and Erica Kirk.

It showed them enjoying life.

I'm sure if you look around, you see couples that are enjoying their marriage, they're happy.

You see them with their kids and.

And you can just tell, maybe you know them personally, that they've got a good marriage.

And God is saying that he wants that for you.

You know, this right here is God.

This is the manufacturer that created marriage, saying he wants you to enjoy life with your spouse.

All right?

And we're going to get into that in just a minute.

And then it says, whatever you put your hand to do, do it with all your heart and might.

And we're going to talk about that.

So the goal here, from this scripture right here, God's promise, what he wants for you, you don't have to ask, you don't have to say.

I don't know if God wants me to be happy.

Yes, he does.

All right?

Goal is to enjoy.

That means anticipate.

Wow.

Exciting, romantic, having fun, a love affair, not having to endure or settle for you may go, well, my marriage isn't fun.

Well, that's not God's fault.

All right?

We have to do our part to have all this come together.

And that's what we're here to help you with.

What are you supposed to enjoy?

Life.

God put a you.

God put a spouse in your life so you guys can come together and journey together and have fun, to have dreams and goals and get through your ups and downs and then with who?

A spouse.

Your spouse should be your partner in life, a teammate, your best friend, a lover, not a roommate.

So don't settle for in those areas.

Okay?

That's right.

Now, here's our version of this scripture.

It's your marriage should be, wow, Exciting, fresh, sizzling.

A marriage of sizzling, rewarding and strong.

And that your best friends, your lovers, your partners in life together, you pursue goals and dreams together.

And when the storms of life hit, you stay unified as a couple.

Together, you pass through the seasons of marriage and life and you can still say that you're married and love it, just like Greg and are still saying.

But it is intentional.

It has to be on purpose.

Yes.

So let's break it down just a little bit more.

And this formula here for success.

So we got four, four parts of this formula, real simple, okay?

You can go to episodes five through 10.

And we do a little deeper dive on some of the topics we're going to talk about tonight because that's from a series we called God's plan for your marriage.

And we encourage you to listen to that because we cover more than what we're doing on this episode and deeper.

So check that out.

So number one part of the formula that God's given us is to enjoy.

Okay.

Oh, that you say, that sounds good.

But you know what you have to decide to enjoy.

You know that first year choice we have.

First two years of marriage, your hormones are going, all the love juices are going.

You don't have the kids yet.

You're horny.

You got nobody else in the house.

You can run around naked.

You go out to eat anytime you want to.

You don't have to get a babysitter.

You're not spending money on all this stuff.

A lot of times you've got it made in the shade, so to speak.

And then the kids come along.

Then the marriage busters cart come along.

You go, what happened to all the fun?

I'm tired all the time.

And maybe mom's got the kids and she's getting wrapped up in the kids, which that's normal.

But all of a sudden the husband starts saying, what about me?

What about me?

What about me?

And then all the.

Then it starts.

Problems.

That's life hitting.

In the midst of all that, you have to say, you know what?

God said I can enjoy my marriage.

So then what happens has to happen.

If this is what's going on in your family, you have to decide to enjoy.

And that means you're going to take action steps to do that, you have to keep the vision of the marriage you want.

Before you ask yourself, what do you want your marriage to look like?

What is your fairy tale, so to speak?

You can have a fairy tale and the dragons are going to come and try to stop that, just like in the movies.

But you can overcome them.

So ask yourself, what do you want your marriage to look like?

Keep that vision before you and work towards it.

And then when those rough times come, remember what you want because the marriage busters will come.

They'll try to destroy your marriage.

And you know what?

They will try to distract you from your marriage.

Maybe it's not real bad, but it's distracting you.

So have a vision that's worth fighting for.

Yeah.

Don't just settle for it, you know, don't just settle for what the world is going to dictate to you.

Don't just settle what they're going to throw out there and say, nike, this is as good as it gets.

That's wrong.

God wants more for you.

And if you'll lay it out there, just, hey, you know, maybe make a right.

Lay the vision before you, you know, write down the things.

If it's not what you want it to be right now or as good as you want it to be, write down what you are interested in seeing it become, you know, and then that'll be, that's what you can do to keep it.

Before you push past that roommates.

That roommate syndrome.

Right, Right.

So don't settle for.

Don't just exist.

Decide to enjoy.

And another little comment here is don't get so caught up in life that you miss your marriage.

Oh, yes.

That is the chaotic, busy lifestyle.

Right, right.

You know, episode.

I don't have that.

I'll have to get that and put it in the show notes.

But we do a really good teaching about how to overcome that chaotic, busy life.

Busy, chaotic, crazy, crazy busy, crazy busy.

That's what I get.

That's crazy busy life.

Right, Right.

And you know, we have to remind ourselves to not get caught up in because sometimes we just gets like.

It just sucks you in.

Yeah.

When you just get caught up in the things of life going on around you and your midget, your marriage is lacking and needing some attention.

But you don't even realize you're so busy.

You don't even realize that this is happening.

Yeah.

So push past that roommate syndrome.

Right.

So don't get so caught up in life that you miss your marriage.

That's what happens.

Why you have empty nesters all the Kids get off the college.

If that's the situation, and they don't have a marriage, they don't know what to do.

They don't know how to rekindle the flames.

They need to listen to our podcast.

There you go.

But that's to get.

It gets so caught up in Life.

They missed 18, 20, 22 years of their marriage because of everything else going on.

That's right.

And any goal worthwhile, it will take effort to accomplish.

So keep an eye on the prize.

All right.

And we're going to talk about how to accomplish that more.

So the second one.

Put on love.

Yes.

All right.

Well, the scripture tells us to enjoy life with the spouse that you love all the days of your life.

We just read that.

But there's another scripture.

Scripture I want to read.

It's Colossians 3, verses 12 through 14.

And it says, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience bearing with one another, forgiving each other.

And whoever has the complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you forgive others.

And that would be, forgive your spouse.

Don't hold on.

And beyond all these things, it says, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

Yeah.

So in your marriage, you got to see this.

It says, put on a heart of compassion.

But then later it says, you can do all these good things.

Be kind, be nice, forgive.

But then it says, beyond all those, put on love.

You got to see it like you're putting on an overcoat.

You're putting on a sweater or coat when it's cold outside or it's raining outside, you.

You make a decision.

It's raining outside.

I need to put a raincoat on.

You put it on.

So what happens?

You and your husband or you and your wife are having a little argument, and you start arguing.

You go back and forth, and all of a sudden you get this zinger, this perfect comeback to what they're saying.

Yeah.

And you know it's gonna zing them real good.

And in a.

In a second, you have that decision.

Yep.

You get to make a choice.

Do I put on love or do I put on anger?

Do I put on selfishness?

Do I put on love?

If you put on love, it will begin to diffuse.

Diffuse the argument.

That's right.

But if you put on selfishness and anger and you put that coat on and you're just all anger, and you give that zinger, what's your spouse going to do?

Because they're probably not going to put on love either.

So they're going to give you a zinger back.

And because you did not put on love, you've got that strife going on in your life, in your thing.

And it says when you put on love, it's the perfect bond of unity.

So, Linda, go ahead and tell us more about love.

If you don't operate in love, all else will eventually fail.

Yeah.

You know, selfishness like Greg's talking about, that's a destroyer, you know, and it builds walls and resentment, anger and even isolation.

But like Greg said, love brings unity.

And that's what we want to see in our marriages, is that unity.

And Philippians 2, verse 3 through 4 says, do nothing from selfishness or empty selfishness.

Selfishness, that's the word right there.

You got to get rid of it and.

Or empty conceit.

But with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more, in part, more important than himself.

Here we go.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interest.

That would be selfish, right?

Yes.

Yep.

But also for the interest of others.

I want to say something in here real quick.

I want to challenge you to take a few minutes sometime today or whenever you're listening to this.

And I'm sure you can think about times when your spouse has been selfish.

But in the last day or two, I want to ask you, try to think if you can retrace your steps in areas when you've been around your spouse or other people even.

But we're focusing on marriage.

Marriage.

When do you think maybe you were selfish?

Did your spouse ask you to.

To do something and you go, no, or you forgot about it, or you said, no, I can't do that, or you didn't want to do that?

Did they ask you your opinion on something?

Did you see something you could have done for them to save them some time, maybe help in the kitchen or.

Or pick up some clothes or do something, get them a cup of coffee and you decided not to see?

Those are little acts of selfishness that we don't even notice that we're doing.

We're not talking.

It's not always the big outright blatant type thing.

Sometimes it's these little things, our little foxes that come in.

So do nothing for selfishness.

We have to have our antennas on.

Always, always at all times.

And, you know, with that in mind, this is a confession I love to say, and I'm just going to read it out and I'm going to say it in the form and we can put this in the show notes for you.

But it's First Corinthians 13 is actually preaches itself.

It does.

If we just had this one scripture.

Wow.

Okay.

First Corinthians 3, 4, 8.

God is love, and the love of God is in me.

Therefore I endure long, and I am patient and kind.

Okay, I'm going to just pause there for a minute.

Like Greg was saying, ask yourself where you might have been selfish, and you might think, oh, I can't think of anything, but is there somewhere that you weren't patient with your spouse?

Is there somewhere that maybe you did not have kind words?

Think about it.

You're meddling.

I have to take this for myself as well.

Ouch.

I can share some examples with you.

You can?

Okay.

Well, I am never envious or jealous.

I am not boastful or proud.

I am never haughty.

Selfish.

There's the word.

Or rude.

Rude with the tude.

All right.

Oh, that's right.

Are you rude with a tude?

Oh, I am never irritable or touchy.

Ouch.

Now, that's hard for women.

There's many times, and we've done several episodes, when the hormones start kicking up, when it's that time of the month, or if we're tired.

Okay.

I am never irritable or touchy.

I'm never resentful, and I do not hold grudges.

I hardly even notice when others may do wrong.

Ooh, yikes.

It just seems so natural that we notice when other people do stuff wrong, especially when it's our spouse and it's right in front of our face.

Yeah, well, we don't want to do that.

We want to be saying, operating in the love of God, and we don't even notice when others may do wrong.

I can expect and believe the best of every person and will defend them no matter what anyone else may say.

You know, it's.

It's really.

You know, that is a.

That it's strong when you can stand up for your spouse.

When other people are degrading them for whatever reason.

You stand up and you take their.

You're defensive.

You.

You are defending them.

No matter what anybody else might say.

The love of God is in me.

The love of God and myself.

Me.

We never fail.

Therefore, I will never fail because love is my greatest aim.

First Corinthians 13, 4, 8.

I love to keep that in front of me.

And I'll say that quite a few times throughout the week or maybe the first time when I get up in.

In the morning or, you know, maybe I'm having a rough day.

And I just decide, you know, I'm not being very kind and I am being more selfish than I want to be.

Sometimes it just overtakes me and I act when I don't want to be acting that way.

Isn't that right?

Yeah.

And, you know, in a cool, cool part of this is it says, the love of God is in me.

Yes.

See, if you're a born again Christian, God's love is, is within you.

And he gives you the capacity through his strength to help you love when it's hard to love.

We don't have to try to do it on our own.

We have to make a decision to act it out.

Right.

And to have it go through us.

But he gives us the ability.

So it takes away excuses that I cannot love.

And yes, there might be.

You may have had somebody that did something really bad to you that hurts.

But because God's love is in you, he can begin to heal your heart and give you the capability to forgive.

It doesn't mean you forgot about it.

I mean, last night on tv, we heard Erica forgive the person who killed her husband.

Yeah.

Does not mean she's not going to have to deal with it.

But she said, I forgive that person.

Yeah, that's tough.

That is hard to do.

I don't know that I could do that.

I, I believe I could do that.

But we all have that moment.

We got to make our own decision.

But God gives us the ability.

You know why?

Because God forgave us for when we fell.

He died for us.

But when we blow it all, we have to just say, God, I apologize.

I'm sorry I was a dingbat and I shouldn't have done that.

I shouldn't have said that to my wife or my, to my husband.

And he forgives us.

So God asks us forget, but he gives us that capability.

So the next step that we're going to talk about on the next episode, and it's build daily habits and making it a lifestyle that's going to enable, if that's happening in our life.

And Greg's going to go into it next.

Well, we're going to go into it.

Yes, on the next episode.

Right.

So we got two more parts of the formula that we're going to pick up next episode.

And so as we get ready to close, just remember God wants you to enjoy your life, your marriage.

He's equipped you to do that.

He wants you to have that fairy tale that you're believing for.

And there's.

If we do these things, we put on love and we decide to go for what he's promised, we put ourselves in position to win and then we've got two more we're going to add to it.

But like Linda brought up earlier on the love, if we're not doing Walking in Love, then it's going to keep us from reaching our goal.

So let's work on Walking in Love and putting on Love this week and for you to get a direction.

Where's your marriage at and how are you going to enjoy it?

Right.

So just a couple things here it that we covered just to kind of do a little recap is enjoy and have a vision for what you want and keep it before you and then put on love and don't be selfish and then we'll cover the next two on our next episode and but we have a couple honeydews that might help.

I would say the honeydew for this one might be.

Did you have one on Love here?

Think about, think about the vision that you have for your marriage.

What does that look like?

What does that look like?

Let's just do that one and then what's the other one?

That's our signature honeydew.

Oh, the ten second kiss.

Yes.

And I just want to talk a minute about the 10 second kiss.

Okay.

You know, listening to Erica when she was talking, it just gripped my heart.

She said that they would always, before Charlie would leave for an event or whatever it was, they would always kiss and that the day that he was murdered, whatever it was, she didn't say how come but they were not able to kiss goodbye or as he was going off for his event.

And I just think about that just struck me about we always are encouraging we on our episodes to do that 10 second kiss with your spouse.

It only takes 10 seconds.

10 seconds.

And it says so much.

It is a volume of love that is coming through from, from one spouse to the other.

It's that connection that you make, you know, that unity, the love.

So I just say doing that 10 second kiss is almost a act of love because there's lots of times I'm getting ready in the morning, I go running off to do something and I get to the door and go, oh, I forgot the 10 second kiss.

You know, I don't know if I have time.

But you know what?

I have to put on love.

It's a decision.

I say I want to go give Linda a kiss because I want to.

I know she wants to and I need to do it for our marriage.

Yes.

Tying into what Linda just said to the extreme.

Case, but I know we need that connection before I leave out for the day.

So did you have something else on that?

Nope.

I think so.

So get your honey, say hey, come here.

Grab them by the cheeks, say hey, Siri, set my timer for 10 seconds and give them a good old kiss and give them a good old hug and go out and have a great day.

And do it when you come home too.

There you go.

And once again I want to say, you know, subscribe, follow, share, push the button to tell people about Married and love it.

And again, I want to just say thanks for joining us today.

And I know that there's somebody you know that could benefit from this podcast in the past podcasts, so spread the word.

Before you spread the word, we hang up here.

Remember, episodes 5 through 10 are going to be doing a deep dive into some of the stuff we're talking about today, so check that out also.

That's great.

So I hope you've gotten inspired by today's message.

I know I have.

It's encouraged me and we're going to be tuning in with you next week.

And until then, remember this.

You can be married and love it on purpose.

Thank you for investing into your marriage by listening to the Married and Love it podcast.

Be sure to be a part of the ripple effect of making marriage great by sharing this podcast with other couples to equip them to be married and love it.

Also, subscribe to and follow us on your favorite platform and be sure to check out our website at www.marriedandlovet.com where you can learn more about Married and Lovett and contact us with any questions or comments that you may have.

And remember with God that you have a future and a hope and you can be married and love it on purpose.