EP 52. Insights From Our 48-year Marriage Journey; Your Still the One; Part 2

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 fantasy, 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 join us.

And we're glad you joined us today to get your weekly dose of Married and love It.

That is your marriage booster shot for the week.

And we're continuing on with our 48 years anniversary celebration.

We're teaching on you're still the One and lessons from our journey.

Now this is part two on this episode.

You know, Linda, I'm going to interrupt you for a minute.

I was just thinking when we were working on this, who knew when we were standing at the altar and we're gazing at each other promising all these things and listening to that song climb this mountain together that we would be here 48 years later teaching other people how to be married and love it.

Yep, that was the furthest thing.

I know what was on my mind that day, but it was the furthest thing.

And then even think, even though we said for better, for worse, for richer or poorer, what we would be facing and the things that have come to test the covenant and commitment we made to each other.

Yeah, it's amazing.

We never know what's going to where our journey's going to take us.

That's why we got to be prepared.

But here we are.

I'm excited about where God's got us.

Yeah, well, we were talking before we started this, we were talking about the communication in marriage, the do's and don'ts, to becoming a skilled communicator.

But we're going to pick up on that in the some future episodes.

Yes, we haven't forgot about that.

Nope, we haven't.

So here we are.

So okay.

Well, on the episode 51, we covered kind of the first part of our our life from when Linda and I first met at Rated G all the way through when we came close to separation and how God came in and, and healed that.

And so we're going to pick up from that point on and finish the rest of our, our married life and through this podcast today.

And one scripture that we got mentioned in episode 51, it.

But it's something we stood on all the time.

It's Jeremiah 29:29 11, which says, I know the plans that I have for you, Greg and Linda, plans for welfare or not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope in every phase of our married life.

That is a scripture that we have stood on because we know God's got something good for us.

So therefore, we're gonna take steps of faith to hang in there and get where our desired results are.

And then Linda's got another scripture that God gave her, but it fits perfectly with this scripture.

Yeah.

And we're gonna talk a little bit more about it in this episode.

But it was a promise scripture that God gave me, Ephesians 3:20.

And he said, I will do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all you can think or ask.

And I'll explain a little bit about that prom.

We get it a little further into this episode now.

What about.

Okay, so starting with 1986 to 2000.

Right before I get into that, I want to bring up one point.

Before I went to Bible college, Linda and I, as we talked in last episode, talked about our early years of marriage.

We were doing some high school ministry and junior high ministry.

Not as a youth pastor, but just being volunteers and working in those ministries and our goal.

I remember a lot of times just saying, I don't ever want to get up and teach or preach.

I don't like getting in front of people.

So my goal, or our goal was to be successful business people, support a church and do volunteer work.

Like maybe work with a part of the church or do ushering and stuff.

That was like it right before we took off the lead.

Go to Bible college.

God said, greg, Linda, I'm calling you guys to full time ministry.

And at that point it was youth ministry.

So our mind shifted to everything we did has been based on ministry.

We have not been pursuing a career.

Everything was based on how can we do what God's called us to do.

And you'll see it work out through our testimony from the rest of this direction.

Yeah, but remember too, even when you were in college, you actually left.

What was it because you didn't want to have to get up in front of a class and speak.

Yeah.

Remember that?

But boy, God had different plans, didn't he?

Don't ever tell God.

Never.

Because I was, I was honestly looking how to get out of my classes at ftu, which is University of Central Florida now and transfer to another college because they didn't require you to take a speech class.

That's how scared and I know a lot of people are like that, but I was to the max scared and such.

Now we're going to get into the next phase of our life.

In 1986 we got back together and for the next four or five years in that area, four areas we kind of stabilized our marriage.

We shifted some of our ministry priorities.

We both started working at I believe was Kenneth Copeland Ministries.

We may have done a little part time stuff in between, but that's where we at.

And then in 1990, Families of Destiny, our marriage ministry was born.

We actually went and spoke at somebody, Elsa's Bible study group.

They said what do you want to speak on?

I said I'm going to speak on marriage.

Didn't know why.

I just happened to be reading a Gary Smalley book.

And out of that, out of that home meeting and they invited us back.

It's opened up to everything we've done because we started, we started speaking.

We started holding our own seminars actually in our house, in our living room and kitchen area.

We would set up and have couples come over, 10, 12 couples come over and we would do teachings.

Then we started doing hotel rooms, a clubhouse and then we actually had our own building where we would hold different types of marriage seminars and meetings.

And then we were traveling around Texas area and even over to Raleigh.

We're at now a few times to speak and then we, we did all that and God said move to Raleigh, North Carolina.

Why?

Well, we had some, some of our foundation from when we first got married and youth ministry was there and they, those, the bunch of people we were with were started a church and pastoring a church.

We had spoken there a couple times and we said we need to relocate.

We felt like God says take your ministry to Raleigh.

So we did that.

We started, came back in, we started looking for doors to open.

We started speaking.

We got involved in that church for a while and things were going good.

I was doing some side jobs actually started a lawn care company because we moved.

We packed up everything in a U Haul, moved all the way over here not knowing where we were going to live, what we were going to do other than we were supposed to be teaching marriage ministry.

Sounds like Abraham when God said pick up and go, leave Your family and you know, or pick up and go.

Well, at that time we had already left our family, but he said, just get up and go and I'll lead the way.

And we.

So we did in faith, right?

Yeah, we had some contacts.

Yeah.

And you know, so we.

We started doing some things and we were.

When we were moving around ministry and what is something that we found.

Was it five love languages in the.

Episode 51 about how it was so important for us to learn to understand each other.

Yeah.

We talked about the different personality styles and.

And at that time, the five love languages had not really come out too much.

Yeah.

It was in the early 90s when.

It started coming out and so then we started learning then about the five love languages.

And I'm telling you, from this, from then until this point between the personality styles and the five love languages, we just highly recommend that.

I mean, those two things saved our marriages.

Well, the love language ended up.

Because they weren't out back in 86.

That was kind of the icing on the cake.

The all the other work we had been doing.

It helped us to realize how the.

To minister toward each other better and properly, not kind of waste our time sometimes because her love language is different to mine.

And we're not going to do a teaching on that.

I mean, we'll go into that in some future episodes.

Right, but.

And we cover it in some other.

And we do in some old ones a little bit.

Yeah.

So that was.

That was really something.

And then.

And then I remember when we were teaching our marriage classes, I mean, we did marriage boot camps for Linda and I and a couple that helped us actually dressed up in army fatigues.

Yeah.

Army boots.

And we had all sorts of different themes and we were having fun and ministering to people.

And I remember looking down and thinking we had been married 17 to 18 years at that time.

Yeah, we thought we knew it all.

Thought we knew it all.

Man.

I look back, we didn't know anything compared to what we know.

Well, we've really gotten us a PhD in marriage life now, so.

And so then we moved to Raleigh.

Things were going good.

And a day after my birthday, 1999, July 26th, it's coming back from a business meeting that I was involved in also.

And somebody T boned me and my nephew and about killed me.

And we got hit by that car.

T boned us.

And then another car hit us on the rear and spun us around.

Next thing I know, we had that major car accident that actually almost knocked my tongue off because I Bit almost bit my tongue in half.

Oh, it was a near.

It was a near fatal.

I mean, they had to take the jaws of life to get him out.

And he was out of town, so they called me.

So me and the kids loaded up and headed over to Greenville, S.C. north Carolina.

North Carolina.

Greenville, North Carolina.

They.

They said, has anybody called you about your husband?

And I'm like, no.

And they said, well, we have him stable now.

I've learned when they say that that is not always such a great thing.

I mean, it's great they get the person stable, but that means something horrible happened.

So Greg's car accident was a big thing.

He was metal, all in his mouth, his face, his head.

I mean, it's a miracle that in his arm.

And it's a miracle his legs or head did not get cut off.

I know it's a little graphic, but really, literally, that's what happened.

And, you know, the.

Our nephew was with Greg and he said that Greg was dead, and he was like, uncle Greg.

Greg doesn't really know that, but he wasn't there.

So, yeah, you know who's who.

He can't make that call.

But Chris was saying, uncle Greg, no, no, you cannot leave us.

And so he called him.

Basically, as far as I'm concerned, he called Greg back from the dead.

And that one pastor guy showed up.

And the past, nobody knows who that guy was.

He disappeared.

It is amazing.

And then all through his recovery, which they could not believe in the hospital, how quickly he recovered from this accident.

But that just goes like, with Greg talking about how he.

His.

He bit his tongue off and how they actually had to sew it back on.

It just.

It just shows that the enemy wanted us to not be talking or Greg to not be talking and teaching about marriages, homes, families, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

And also at that time, because we had been Christians for quite a while and studying, and when we were in Fort Worth, Texas, we were building our spiritual foundation when all this happened.

We knew how to stand on the word of God.

We knew the promises for healing and health restoration and for God to come in and take care of us.

And he did.

And Linda had scriptures all over, and.

I would not let a single person come in that room if they were going to talk anything negative about Greg.

I'm like, leave the room.

And I mean, I was nice, I think, wasn't it?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I was out of it.

You were out of it.

I still don't remember anything.

I had scriptures.

I had scriptures that Played.

I had.

I mean, we.

We spoke the word over this man and had scriptures that played all through the night and I had them hung up on the wall for whomever and whatever to see.

And I mean, we were.

That is the foundation that together.

I don't, you know, I don't think I would have survived.

I know.

You know, so it's.

This is part of our teaching is because build that.

Get God involved in your life, in your marriage and don't wait till problems hit.

Yeah.

A car accident, a sickness, a disease.

Don't wait till the spouse walks in and you.

They're ready to.

They're.

They're totally frustrated, maybe not ready to leave.

And that does happen.

You hear that story all the time.

Listen for the red flags and take, Take action.

So you recovered?

So I recovered.

It took us about.

I think I was out of action for about three to four months with my mouth wired shut with a trach tube and Linda was taking care of me.

Oh, night.

I was mean.

Yeah.

What?

You want to know how I was mean?

All right, y'.

All.

Because he could not.

His mouth was wired shut for three months.

I think something like that.

He couldn't do anything.

We had to give him liquids, pure, pureed mashed potatoes, pureed soup, pureed everything.

But then we would sit down.

My mom and sister came up and helped.

And then my other sister and her kids, they were so helpful in with Greg and helping me because I still had a business that was full fledged that I was running at the same time.

And so then we all would sit down and eat a meal while he was sipping through a straw, like four.

Glasses with different flavors.

So mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But anyways, back to the business.

Health issues then started up with me.

God.

Well, God just came in and took care of it.

Actually.

Linda and I had.

We were.

Our goal was ministry.

Yeah.

We were not.

We're looking for jobs.

So we actually just started.

I started a lawn care company that did real well.

And then I finally.

I got into some other type of sales thing and that was a waste.

And I got.

Got back in the long camp company and actually helped Linda start doing some house cleaning.

Just something.

Because our goal was to go out and be ministry full time.

And God, when this happened, miraculously came in and took care of us during that time.

Now we.

Now we enter into that.

I'm going to say it's from 2, that year 2000 to about 2012.

I call it the black hole of our life.

Right.

It wasn't that bad.

See, during Those up to 1999, that whole area, we were having fun, we were having adventures with ministry.

We're spending more time with our kids and everything was going good.

Our marriage was going good.

We shifted gears after my car accident.

We felt like we, we were wanting to just clean houses and do stuff on the side to make money.

All of a sudden our cleaning business started growing and then we started hiring people.

And then as we did that.

Now there's another thing.

Linda and I worked together, not also kcm, but now in our own business and ministry.

And we didn't kill each other.

Kcm, in case people don't know, that's Kenneth Copeland Ministries in Fort Worth, Texas.

Yeah.

And.

But what happened is we begin to get so caught up in the cleaning because at one point we got up to 33 employees.

We had about 4, 500 homes.

Yeah.

Something like somewhere in there and it was doing good.

And, and then we actually got involved with a multi level marketing type business that we got in and we said, well, that's going to help pay for our, our ministry.

So we actually got distracted.

Yeah.

Through those years and, and then later, closer 2008, a recession hit.

We lost a lot of business.

My mom had Alzheimer's and she died and, and my, and she passed away.

And I can remember my dad taking care of her.

I mean if you've never ever been around somebody with Alzheimer's, that's going to test your marriage.

Because she would be in there and she would say, who were you to him?

And treat him like crap a lot of times.

But he just kept loving her, serving her, ministering to her the best that he could.

He was there to the end serving her.

And that's another thing.

When you say to your vows, stuff like this can happen.

Most of us, it won't happen that bad.

But that's when the rubber meets the roads, when you have stuff happening in your life.

Yeah, that is true.

There's lots of stories of people, their spouses go to old folks homes or nursing homes and they don't know who they are anymore and they just bail on him.

He stayed there in the midst of the way she would treat him and he just loved her and loved her and loved her.

So she passed away and then.

Yeah, my dad, my dad committed suicide.

And you can imagine, I mean, I don't even want to go into the details of that, but anybody there out there that has had that happen in there life, whether it be a parent or a spouse or maybe a child, it is a traumatic situation, is traumatic.

And and so that's that very traumatic.

Times, things like what we're talking about, they pull people apart.

Yeah.

They.

The marriages don't survive in the middle of all of these issues.

But if you have a strong foundation and you're determined that you're going to make it pull you together and make it work and that you're going to be a support system there for each other.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to say one of those things.

But wait, there's more.

Wait, there's more.

Oh, my goodness.

So the next few years after living that overall, we just weren't.

We weren't doing ministry.

I'm going to say our marriage was good.

We were having fun, and our marriage was doing good, but we just weren't doing what we were called to do.

Yeah, We.

We were working on creating income for it, but that never materialized.

So we were not.

I call it a black hole.

And then coming around about 2011 and 12, and Linda had some other situations earlier than that.

Kind of like gallbladder and some other things that would hit, but they were kind of like temporary setbacks.

But starting around 2011, 12, her back started hurting.

So, Linda, why don't you pick up there.

I had ended up having two major.

Back surgeries within five years.

Yes, that.

Ye.

That's true.

And then I had a. I don't know if anybody's heard about a spinal cord simulator.

Had that put in cataracts.

I'm going to go down real quick.

Two hand surgeries is like one surgery after the other.

I had a full hip replacement.

Then I had a heart attack with five stints put in.

And then my legs started backing up.

They call it Pad P A D. So twice I've done that, dealt with neuropy, and now I am in a boot for walking then.

I don't mean that song.

These Boots Are Made for Walking.

No, I'm in a. I broke my foot.

So on top of all that, it has just been the.

Has continued.

But we have broke that and said, no more, no more, no more.

We're gonna get over this.

And Greg has been through all this constant caretaker with his dad.

His dad actually moved in.

I don't know if we mentioned that.

Did we haven't got to that.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Oh, that's right.

So Greg's been a constant caretaker for me because I've lived with chronic pain ever since about 2011.

And so what.

What about when your dad moved in?

Well, while Linda was going through all these, you know, when somebody has surgery, they can't do as much and then there's recover.

But because of the type of problems Linda had, especially with her back, she's never been 100% since before her.

Since she started having problems.

So I've been having different degrees of caretaking and responsibilities this whole time.

I put in a lot more than she did when I had my car accident.

So she owes me.

Yeah.

But during that time through all this different things hitting.

We actually ended up losing the business that we had because when all this started, I just was not involved it anymore.

The people who were helping me run it had the, the recession zapped it and we never rebuilt it.

And my focus even got off that after a few years.

And the person I had helping me, he got sick and it just fell apart.

And then our finances hit rock bottom.

Yeah.

You know, we were like broke and I remember us getting money out of the couches and selling some stuff.

We had a short period of time where we just had to regroup.

But we, and this is the key point here.

Linda was in pain.

We've been through all of that.

We had a finances hit and we were going through a struggle.

Like who are we?

What are we doing?

But you know what?

Instead of me being frustrated and say, oh, you're always sick.

And she's saying, well, how come you didn't do this with the money or how come this happened and blah, blah, blah.

Your dad living with.

Well, yeah, he went in quite.

Yeah.

Within a few months he came in.

But it's like we came together.

Yes.

Sat on the couch.

We're gonna pray.

I remember saying, Linda, I. I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I'm.

You know, and.

But we, we held hands, we prayed and we spoke the word.

We did what we could.

God provided and we slowly have rebuilt during that time.

Yes, my dad came in and moved.

We kind of helped him out.

He helped us out and.

But that was a whole nother story, him living with us.

Wow.

You know, 2, 000 square foot townhouse.

That's a little different than having a grandpa suite around the corner.

Right.

All these things we, we.

But we made it bring us together and we've overcome and we're going to talk about some of the things we did now.

As we were getting through all that probably around closer 20, 18, 19.

I began to get a flame back in me for married and love for families of destiny.

That's what we used to call it, but now it's called married and love it.

And God would say, here, do this get your old notes out, get your course information out, get it organized.

And then this is a ministry teaching.

So we're not going to go into.

But we slowly begin to rebuild our vision for married and love it.

And it's changing form.

See, when we first started, everything was cassette tapes.

Oh, gosh.

So I go and, yeah, get some of our old materials out to start listening to them again, and everything's on a cassette tape.

I had to find the cassette player.

You know, there was no such thing.

Cell phones were hardly going when we first started this.

That's true.

But God came in and he was faithful.

He says, greg, you guys may have got away from things.

Life has hit and zapped you, and the dream is still there.

But now we've kind of got a PhD.

We've been through this more stuff that.

Piled high and deep.

Deeper.

Yes, exactly.

And so we've come together and learned so much more and.

And been able to.

I mean, we still love each other.

I mean, I'm gonna be honest.

It.

All of these different physical things have even impacted our sex life because we.

We're pretty good and active through the years, and that's a highlight.

But, you know, we've had to adapt in a lot of different ways.

And these are things that can destroy a marriage.

Just one of these things.

Financial problems is bad enough, or sickness and health or apparent.

Just the kind of medicine I've been on.

But we were having a great.

The great perfect storm trying to hit.

And I know some people go, well, you didn't have enough faith, or you weren't doing this, you weren't doing that.

You know what?

We were doing a lot of the right stuff.

The enemy's coming in, but we can't look at all that.

We got to look at where we're going.

And number one is keeping.

So we didn't just dive right back into the ministry because Linda wasn't even ready.

Matter of fact, she's still not where we need to be to do some things we want to do.

That's why sometimes we get behind on our recordings or stuff, because we're doing this together.

And I don't know how to do the editing on our scripting, so I have to wait for her.

But.

But we're.

We're a team, but God has brought us closer together, so that's kind of where we're at.

We are doing the podcast, we're working on trying to do speaking.

We're working on a book and maybe some courses, but that's our goal right now.

Is by you listening to this, is to teach you and help you learn from our experiences and things that helped us all the way back to 1975 and how to be married and love it on purpose.

So you can say to your spouse, you're still the one, and you can also be the one.

Now, Linda, let's look at some of these things that we've done.

Yeah.

That's helped us.

Okay.

Well, we built a strong foundation, like you said.

We prayed, pray, pray, pray.

We pray together.

We pray that cup.

There's a statistic.

Couples who pray together have a greater chance of surviving in their marriage because they're praying together.

That's right.

We got God's word on it.

We got the God factor involved.

We.

We made a commitment again, to each other.

And I'm telling you what.

There has been God's grace for Greg in so many ways and his grace for me.

Right?

Yeah.

Because I look back and I think of all I've been doing.

I mean, I even had a stint that.

This is back around 2016 or 17, a stint working at Chick Fil A for a year and a half.

Well, when you say stint, I think heart stint.

Trying to make some money.

I've done some other things on the.

Side a time and still doing some.

Things on the side.

Now they're bringing some money and.

And everything.

But that was a very humbling experience.

And I'm not going to go into that, but I learned a lot of stuff there.

But see, God's word.

God got us through all the time.

He does little things to say, I'm here with you.

Are we where we want to be?

No, but we're on our way.

But God's word, and then we're committed to one another.

Well, I. I find myself constantly saying I have grace for this place.

Yes.

It's like a little mantra that I'll say throughout the day when it's like, it's been a hard day.

I have grace for this place.

Yes.

And we.

And we believe that.

That scripture, we always go back to Jeremiah 29:11, that God promised us a future and a hope for good.

Right?

Right.

Yep.

And then I always come back to the Ephesians 3:20 that says God's promise to me that he would do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all I can think, grasp.

And we put on love.

We made that decision to put on love and be a team.

And what's the biggest thing that we constantly turn to that we did not give up.

We.

We have not given up.

Yeah, we didn't give up.

And we go back to the foundation, things that we did back when we got back together.

Work on our communications, understanding one another, putting the word of God first, investing into our marriage.

Take developing common interest so we can.

We didn't used to do things together when we first got married, other than work in ministry.

But then we started doing things like taking walks.

Yeah, the walking.

I had my accident.

And then even after that, until Linda, I guess it's been since 2012, every day Linda and I would take a walk with each other.

You don't know how much that does.

When you take a 20, 30, 45 minute walk, if you have the time and you got to work out your kids, put your kids in a stroller.

Yeah.

Well, unless they're a teenager.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That might be harder, right?

Those little things sitting down.

Yeah.

When you come home from work or doing something, 10, 15.

There's lots.

So many things you need to do before the storm hits.

That's what Matthew talks about.

So we're not just teaching y', all, we're reminding ourselves on a constant basis when we.

Oh, yeah, when we put these podcasts out, we're.

We're having to remind ourselves for our marriage and what, what we're doing in our marriage to keep it being on fire.

Yeah.

You know, to be yours, to be able to say you're still the one.

Right.

And.

And we're doing this.

We know we got the fire going again.

We're doing stuff.

We've got over 50 episodes in here.

We've got a course that we have.

And there's other things.

Like I said, we're rebuilding our dream.

And you know what?

What?

We're a little older than life.

But you know what?

Caleb was up in his 80s, 85.

He says that I'm as strong now as I was back when, 40 years ago.

And that's our goal.

We want to be as strong or stronger now.

We're.

Linda's getting healthy.

I've got a couple little things I'm dealing with for the first time in life, but I'm overcoming.

And no matter where you're at in life, I don't care what your marriage has been through, like all the stuff we've been through and why it's happened, who knows on all that type of stuff, the devil's defeated, God's plan will prevail.

But don't ever give up.

You can always start over again.

If your marriage is not doing good right now, it can begin again.

You can begin again.

You can There is hope and move on.

There's hope for wherever you're at in.

In your marriage.

And I want to close with this.

We've used this scripture a couple times in other podcasts.

It's God's plan for your marriage.

But I believe if it's a foundation for what Linda and I did it and probably didn't even realize we're doing it.

But it's Ecclesiastes 9, 9 through 10, and it says, relish and enjoy life with your spouse.

Actually, the one wording there is a wife, but I put in spouse, relish and enjoy life with your spouse.

So this is just you, your spouse, both of you guys.

I don't.

Maybe this.

The husband's listening to the wife listen.

Get your spouse to listen to this.

But that's his thing.

You're supposed to be enjoying your marriage.

It should be the best thing in the world.

It should not be a challenge.

Yes, there's challenges there.

But you two together are overcoming and getting through the having young kids, older kids, no kids, parents back in, all that type of stuff.

Finances, no finances.

Sickness and disease.

God wants you to enjoy your life.

Now, here's what it says.

Here's the key.

It says that you love the spouse that you love.

And here's one of the action steps from the scriptures in Colossians 3, 12, 14, it says, Love, Put on love.

Every day you've got to decide to put on love.

Go back and listen to some of our other podcasts about how to do that.

But love conquers.

Love will get you through this.

So every day and love is a decision, right, Linda, I don't know why you had to do.

Love is a decision.

That's it.

So whatever it's going on, put on love.

And then it says, each and every day, daily create lifestyles of love.

Develop habits.

Maybe it's that daily walk or month, once a week walk even.

Maybe it's putting on love.

Maybe it's setting aside.

All right, this week we're gonna.

We're gonna be intimate.

Make love twice.

This week, it's putting on love.

Preferring your spouse.

Develop a lifestyle of love and romance and teamwork.

And that means you got to develop daily habits.

So love create your daily habits.

And then verse 10 says, Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your heart and might.

That means when you put on that wedding band and you.

You held your spouse's hands when you said, I do, you were committing to your spouse.

You're going to do everything in the world to make your Marriage succeed and to serve them and make them glad you married them.

You follow what I'm saying?

You're there to minister to them, and it says, do it with all your might.

Because what happens, we get lackadaisical.

We get in a rut.

That's why everything.

We get bored in our marriage, relationships, because we're not putting our hand to our marriage and doing what we need to do it.

Hey.

And I want to just say, so many people enter into marriage thinking what they're going to get out of it, right?

That's not what it's all about.

It's what you're able to put into your marriage.

You're just serve your mate.

You're to serve and love them as Christ love the church.

Husbands are told to do that, but we serve one another.

It's not.

What am I coming into this marriage to get out of it?

No, that's the selfish point of view.

A selfless commitment is what marriage should be all about.

Yes.

I see.

When you held hands, you're not putting your hand out and say, all right, what are you going to give me?

What are you going to give me?

No, we put our hand out.

We're saying, what am I going to give you?

How am I going to love you and serve you?

You know, when I did that, I was saying to Linda, it was like, I'm going to learn how to understand you.

I'm going to learn your personality.

I'm going to learn your love language so I can love you properly, so I can understand your personality and compliment you and where we don't have friction, I'm going to learn how to.

To serve you in all areas.

I'm going to learn how to.

To make love to you properly.

I'm going to learn how to romance you.

I'm gonna learn how to.

To wash the dishes with you and for you.

So all those.

That's what you're saying.

All the different areas, you're saying, I'm gonna learn so everybody's responsible.

And what it says, if you do those three things.

Love, create, habits, put your hand all into it, you will relish and enjoy life with your spouse, and you guys will get through the hard times.

Yes, that's it.

Amen.

Yes.

All right.

All right, Let me pray.

Oh, okay.

Father, we just.

Right now.

Yes.

Pray for all the.

The people that are listening.

The husbands, spouses, maybe both of them have been listening, whatever, wherever they're at in their marriage.

Lord, I ask that you just challenge them today after listening to our story, to Say, you know what?

I want to still be able to say, you're still the one to my spouse.

And I, more than that, I want to be the one for my spouse.

Lord, if there's any areas that are weak in our relationship, show me and help me to strengthen those areas to make myself stronger.

And even if my spouse isn't on board or doesn't know what's going on, help me to be an example.

Help me to be the one to lead in love so that our marriage can be everything you've called it to be.

And so if the storms hit, I'm ready.

I'm ready.

And oh, Lord, I just pray that over the spouses that are listening and to the couples that are listening, so whatever year they're coming up on, the first year of marriage, 20 years of marriage, whatever it is, they're going to be able to say they're enjoying life with their spouse, that they're still.

Their spouse is still the one, and that they're married and love it.

Jesus name.

I agree.

In Jesus name.

Now, we do have some honeydews, but before we get into that, I just want to let you know, in celebrating our 48th wedding anniversary, we are going to be doing a drawing and we're going to be giving away four of our married and love it coffee mugs.

And so if you are already on our mailing list and you send in a comment or question, maybe it's a prayer request, we're going to put your name in that drawing.

And if you have not yet signed up for our newsletter, then sign up.

And the deadline to enter is between now and November 30th, and the drawings going to be on December 1st.

And so tell people about married and love it.

Tell them about our newsletter.

Tell them about how they can, you know, just have fun listening to podcasts while they're working out or cooking in the kitchen or driving back and forth to work, you know, let them know that this is a podcast that they want to listen to.

So here's some Honey do's.

Okay, first of all, think about your story, your personal story, and is there any, anything there, any course adjustments on your life's journey of being married?

Is there any adjustments that you may need to make?

Think about that.

Now you can think about that just for you.

Or maybe you and your spouse can sit down and talk about together when you're having a date night, something of that sort.

Yeah, that's one thing.

What is another of our honeydews?

Another one is the ten second kiss.

We're always going to bring this one up because it's very important.

So if you're new to the podcast, you haven't listened to us before, we believe in every day given a 10 second kiss and it should become a daily habit.

You know, make it a habit.

If you, after you do it for two or three months daily or almost daily every how you work it, you'll start thinking, oh, gotta go do the 10 second kiss.

And you just start doing it and it's 10 seconds.

Don't go over and give a little peck and say here it is.

No, it only takes 10 seconds.

So grab your spouse, pull them over to you, or lean over the chair, kiss them wherever they're at they're washing dishes or getting dressed, whatever time for 10 second kiss.

Set your timer.

Hey Siri, set my timer for 10 seconds, whatever you use and just plant a nice one on them.

Give a good kiss.

You can go longer for extra credit if you want and just see how it begins to impact your marriage.

It does make a difference.

So like I said, now text us, email, do a voicemail, even leave your comments and any questions.

Or maybe there's a certain topic that you would like us to cover.

We'd be more than happy to hear from you on that.

Prayer requests.

Like I said, we pray for you all daily.

We do that on a regular basis and that's important to us.

And then, you know, leave a comment on how much you like our podcast.

We like to hear that, right?

Yes, we do.

Okay, well hopefully today you have been inspired by this message, hearing a little bit about us and where we coming from and where we're going.

And so we're gonna see 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 in Lovett on purpose.