EP 71. Marriage Quickie (1 of 4); The God Factor

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're taking time to invest into your marriage by listening to your weekly dose of marriage insights.

We'll discuss all aspects of marriage, including the hot topics of sex, love, communication and more.

Our insights and lessons are based on Christian principles plus over 48 years of marriage and ministry experience.

Our goal is to help you make your marriage great by equipping you to be married and love it.

It's an honor and privilege to have you join us.

Hey, thanks for joining us today to get your weekly dose of Married and Love it your booster shop for the week.

Now we were going to be sharing part three of our series called Genuine six vital ways for you to love your spouse.

But however, we're in the process of getting ready to go to Dallas, Texas for a minister conference this coming week and we' excited about that just to get around a group of ministers and get ministered too for all the stuff that we're involved in.

So plus we've had some issues of life hit and things have been kind of hectic lately.

So what we're going to do because we're running just a little bit behind on where we want to be is we're going to do part three of the series Linda talked about in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we're going to have some what we call marriage quickies, little 5 to 10 minute snippets of different marriage topics that we're going to record so you can listen to those.

And they should build on one another.

So be ready, listen to them and have you a good marriage quickie, you'll be glad you did.

So enjoy these little snippets.

And then in a couple weeks we'll be back to part three of Genuine Love.

Today's topic is talking about the God factor.

Now we have been given a mandate from God to teach what we've learned and experienced through 48, almost 49 years when here's some of the principles that we have applied.

So we're going to share them with you.

Number one, we commit our marriage to the Lord and we base it on his word.

That is a forever thing.

That's what we did when we got married, committing our marriage to the Lord, asking him to come in and help us.

Yeah, that covenant that we have, saying our vows, the whole bit, right?

Yes.

Well, Proverbs 16:3 says commit your works to the Lord and your plans.

And we put in there our marriage will Be established, say so.

Hey, hey, God, here's our marriage.

We're committing our way to you.

And that puts us in position for the marriage factor to come into play.

And that leads to number two.

Point is Joshua 1:8, and it says, I love the Scripture.

Meditate on the Word day and night.

So in other words, be studying His Word.

And in regards to marriage, that's you getting understanding about how marriage works from His Word, but also reading other godly Christian books and listening to other teachers talk about marriage from a Christian perspective.

And it says, then it says so that you may be careful to do all that is written in it, because as you do it, it says, your way will be prosperous, and then you will have success.

So that's the key to success in life, but especially to your marriage.

All right, so Joshua 1:8, meditate on the Word and be a doer of the Word.

Yeah.

God gives us that marriage instruction manual, and that's the Bible.

Like, for example, if you're making a cake and you're missing one ingredient, well, that cake's going to turn out yucky, right?

That's right.

Yeah.

So.

And that usually happens because you don't read.

You either get forgetful or you're proud,.

Or you don't read the instructions.

Right, Right.

Or you get prideful and you say, I don't need to read that.

Well, I've seen a lot of men trying to put together a baby bed or something like that, and they have that little instruction sheet.

Yeah.

They don't.

They toss it aside and they try to put that.

I can put it together, furniture together.

Well, it usually ends up a mess.

You got parts left over, whatever.

Yep.

So the bottom line is, God gives us an instruction manual and we need to use it.

Now, I remember when me and Linda started having some issues going on, and that one.

One point where she called up, not trying not to go into all the details, but she out of town, called up and said, greg, I'm coming home to get the kids, and I'm going back home to where my parents are at.

I'm leaving you.

I'm leaving you.

In other words.

Yes, my world fell apart.

Moving away.

And we talk about this in depth in other episodes.

But she had been trying to get me to read the two or three marriage books that we had, and I never read on my read them for a week or two, put them down and said, oh, I don't need this stuff.

What happened?

I wasn't reading the instruction manual.

I read those books in about three days.

And since then, I've been reading and studying and now we're teaching on marriage.

So you got to be listening to the word and applying it.

Well, the manual offers to us principles to live by.

It's our north star.

It's our baseline, actually.

It's our foundation to life.

And yeah, go ahead.

And it's an anchor.

Yeah.

That we can build our marriage on.

Right.

It's our go to source.

If you got a problem, say, hey, well, how do we communicate?

How do we make love better?

How do we get through these issues?

How do we deal with our in laws or whatever?

So it's our go to source.

And when you read the Bible and read other success stories about marriage, you know what it builds?

Strength, faith, hope and grace.

That's what God brings into your marriage, into you individually when you do that.

And this happens by applying and believing God's principles and promises.

And what's a biggie?

Ask him for help.

I mean, there is nothing wrong with asking God for help.

I mean, he wrote the whole instruction manual.

Hey, you're going to the top dog.

And if you ask him for help, you know, you kind of have to help.

You.

You kind of have a Holy Ghost.

Chat box, don't you?

There you go.

I love that.

But it's not AI, it's the Holy Ghost.

It's the Holy Ghost.

Thank God.

Amen.

Well, Philippians 4:13 also says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

And we see here that God's power gets us through life.

It gets us through those tough times that we're all experiencing.

It gets us through people that are hard to love.

It actually gets us through ourself.

Yes.

We can be a challenge and any kind of other challenging situation.

Yeah.

So I can do all things.

So if your marriage is hurting, you can say, you know what, God, I can get through this.

Or you're having a struggle in your marriage.

Maybe it's a financial struggle because of God's anointing his power.

I can do all things.

I can be the husband I want to be.

I can be the wife.

And you pray that over yourselves.

But it gets you through the hard life situations.

If it's major financial struggles, maybe there's a sickness, disease, wayward kids.

It gives you strength and energy when you tap into God's power.

And you know, Linda and I had God's grace all through our 48 years.

Yes, but especially the grace gives you that supernatural ability to get through stuff.

For me, being Linda's caretaker for the last 13 years, doing just about everything.

It's given me that supernatural ability to do it and not go crazy.

And just like Linda's had grace to get through this chronic pain that she's constantly going through and all the other issues.

So God comes in and equips us to win, but we gotta tap into his power.

Number four here is really powerful.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

It's Matthew 18:19.

It talks about the power, the prayer of agreement.

It talks about the power of two together in the prayer of agreement.

And it shall be done unto them.

You know, a couple that are praying together is super powerful.

It really is.

So some of the things when we are praying is be praying for your spouse, either together.

You can pray for each other or just individually pray for your spouse, study his word together, or you know what, be the first one to initiate it.

Don't wait on your spouse.

And you know, men, we women, we love it when our guys pray.

They take the initiative to pray, even if it's just to pray over Johnny having a runny nose or whatever.

It might be there, right there.

That's right.

So do that pair of agreement.

You know, it can be just husbands or wives.

Either one of you just grab your spouse's hand, say, hey, can we pray real quick?

Yes.

And just hold your hands.

And even if it's a silent prayer, start somewhere, have a power of agreement.

Because we know this is hard for people to do a lot of times because some people are private.

But you know what?

You can do all things so you can begin to pray together.

Start somewhere.

All right, number five, point here.

How to tap into the power.

John 15:7 says, I am the vine, you are the branches, and it's called abiding in the vine.

So as you spend time with God, you're reading His Word, you're spending time with prayer, you're drawing strength and energy in his grace.

But if you're not plugged into it, if the branch is broken off, what happens?

It dies.

So we need to plug into the power of God by abiding in the vine, abiding in His Word.

And.

And then Romans 10:17 says, Faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God.

So who are you listening to regarding your marriage?

Are you listening to negative people?

People telling you to quit, to.

To get rid of your spouse or you're never going to make it.

Are you listening to God and building your faith?

Yeah.

Plug into that power source.

I'm telling you, a lamp is not going to work if it's not plugged in, is it not Getting any power?

No.

You know, so that comes back even to the power of agreement in prayer.

I mean, these all kind of feed on each other.

They build on each other, but plug into that power source every day or keep yourself plugged into that power source.

Right?

That's right.

And in God's hands, you have a bright future.

Yes.

You know why I know that?

Why?

Because Jeremiah 29:11 tells me.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, Plans for welfare, not calamity.

To give you a future and a hope.

And that would be in our marriage, in our health, in our money situations, in our dreams, in our goals.

You know, don't have a settle for mentality.

You know, life is going to come.

Life is going to hit.

The marriage busters are gonna hit.

But when we put our marriage in God's hands, we know that we can overcome the circumstances of life.

That's right.

That's his promise for us.

Yes.

He's got a future and a hope,.

And so grab hold of it.

Faith for that comes by abiding in the vine.

All right, now here's the results of bringing in the God factor into your marriage.

Matthew 7, 24, 27.

I'm just going to go through this real quick.

You probably know it.

It says, therefore, every marriage.

I'm paraphrasing a little bit.

Every marriage who hears these words of mine, God's words and acts upon them may be compared to a wise marriage which built its house upon the rock.

And the marriage busters came life and hit and burst against that house, and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock.

And the next part says, for people who aren't following God's word, the marriage busters came.

And great was the destruction of that house because it was built on the sand in that marriage.

So build your marriage on God's word by applying it and bringing in the God factor.

God has got this supernatural power for you to have.

Don't try to do it on your own.

Don't neglect God.

He is not a God that's trying to tell you, you know, he's not trying to tell you how to live and you're bored.

God wants you having an awesome sex life.

You want sizzle instead of fizzle.

You can apply God's word.

He wants you to know how to communicate, how to handle your kids, how to handle money, everything.

And it's in his word.

And we just got to get him in us so we can draw on that and we Go into this more in episodes one through three about the God factor.

That's great.

Yeah.

So we're gonna build the our marriage on God's word.

And that's what the God factor is all about.

And that, that really is the number one key to having a successful marriage.

You know, it's our baseline, like Greg said.

So here's a few honeydews that we have.

Number one, hear it.

Hear the word of God here at.

And number two, apply.

Apply the word of God.

You know, make it work.

Apply it.

Three, do it.

Do it.

Yep.

And what's number four, dear the ten second guest.

Remember, grab your honey, pull them up to you in the morning before you maybe head out the door.

Whatever you're doing, they come here, set your timer for 10 seconds and give your spouse a good old 10 second kiss.

I love it.

That's right.

It's great.

Be married and love it by doing the 10 second kiss.

There you go.

We would love to hear your comments and any questions that you might have or if you have some topics that you'd like to cover in our podcast.

Well, then text them, voicemail them, or email us.

The phone number and email address is going to be in our show notes.

And if you have a specific prayer request that you'd like us to cover, we pray for the Marian Lovett family every single day, so please feel free to contact us.

And, and we just want to say again, thanks for joining us on our little marriage quickies that we're presenting today and we hope that you've been inspired by them.

We're going to see you next time.

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.

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Love it 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.