EP 9. MAKING YOUR MARRIAGE GREAT: PART 3 Continued-Action Steps 3&4 All In and Dressed Marriage. Commitment and love.

Hey, welcome to the Married and Lovett podcast.

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

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We will be covering everything that has to do with marriage, including hot topics like sex, communication, love, and 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's an hon and a privilege to have you join us.

During today's episode, we will continue the Making Marriage Great Series Part 3, which is six action steps to God's plan for your marriage.

And the scripture that we're using for a foundation for this section is Ecclesiastes 9:9.

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

And on top with that right there in mind, I want to say Linda and I just celebrated 47 years of marriage on November 12th.

So we're able to go and still be able to say married and love it.

So happy anniversary.

Happy anniversary.

Yes, thank you very much.

And we get to live out this.

Yes, we get to live out this scripture all the time.

And you know, it's a decision.

It is, it is really a decision because the enemy comes in and tries to steal, kill and destroy.

And that's why on action step number one, which is episode six, we say to this, you decide to enjoy your married life.

Well, there's many times during our 47 years where we have to make that decision, right, dear?

We've had to make decision.

I mean, even sometimes when we go to record, tensions can get up because you got technical equipment.

Are we tired?

Are we awake?

The dog barks, the phone rings and we can get aggravated.

But you know what?

We make a decision.

So action step number one, episode six.

If you haven't listened to that, make a decision right now to listen to episode six.

And then action step number two is to say goodbye to crazy busy.

Which this is perfect to be listening to that podcast because it, we're in the middle of the holiday seasons.

And if, if you listen to this podcast right around there.

But what's that?

I said, oh yeah, oh yeah.

And that's busy on Steroids.

Crazy busy on steroids.

So the episode seven and eight that talks about balanced marriage, it refers to tips to how to get balanced in that busy time.

So if you've missed either episode six or the seven and eight, like I said a while ago, decide to go back and listen to them because they're really good.

They're really good.

And you're not too busy to listen to them because while you're driving, while you're going grocery shopping or cooking in the kitchen, cleaning the house, whatever, you're going for a nice walk and enjoying this fall weather, put your headsets on and listen to them.

You'll be glad you did step number three, which is being all in, and also step number four, which is all dressed up for your marriage.

Let me take a minute before we get into those next couple steps and remind everybody to subscribe to our podcast so that you can be notified when the new episodes come out.

Now, we're going to do step number three right now, which is being all in.

And that refers to the word spouse.

And I'm applying that to even marriage in our Ecclesiastes 9, where it says, and relish and enjoy life with the spouse.

And that would be your marriage or for you.

You know, on your wedding day, you held hands with your spouse and you gazed into your eyes.

And I want to apply Ecclesiastes 9:10 to that.

It says, whatever your hand finds to do, do with all your might.

So when I was holding hands with Linda, she's holding hands with me.

Or you're with your spouse and you're holding hands on your wedding day, what you're saying is, I'm putting my hand to you and our marriage, and I'm going to go 100% in on this.

I'm all in.

And I'm holding your hands and I'm all into.

When we're in it to win it, people say, and I want.

It's kind of like when you do a business deal, you shake hands, right.

And seal the deal.

Right?

You seal the deal.

Yeah.

That's like in the old days.

Nowadays, people's word doesn't seem to mean a whole lot, but you reach over and shake that man's hand or woman's hand, that's your bond.

And that's what we're doing before God in our family members and our friends were saying, I take you and I am committed, I'm all in, to the success of my marriage and really being somebody who's going to take care of you.

Because let's look at what the vowels say.

Okay, I'll just use this for me and Linda.

This basically what we used because, you know, a lot of people take.

Do vows now and they don't take them serious or they really don't have anything to do about their own.

They're good, they're about feelings, but they're not about commitment.

Commitment is.

This one says, I, Greg, take you, Linda, to be my wife.

To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poor, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish.

Everybody say that.

To love and to cherish until we are parted by death.

So that's an attitude and actions to have continually.

As God is my witness, I give you my promise with that.

As you're holding hands with your spouse, you're committing to love through all the ups and downs that you're going to face, all the joys of sorrows, the challenges, but you're committing to be there in the good times.

But the bad times are the ones that can pull you apart.

You're.

You're committed to enjoy life with your spouse.

It's being a hundred percent committed.

Yeah.

No halfway.

It's doing your daily things to please your spouse because the word says we're concerned about pleasing our spouse.

See, we got to quit being selfish, but get into the.

I'm here to serve you.

Not what you can do for me, but your daily love habits, if you want to call it that.

Daily ministering and to your spouse and then getting through the hard times.

But also that commitment is saying, I'm going to do whatever it takes to make our marriage stronger.

You know, you don't, you don't stop growing.

You want to continue to grow and build a stronger and stronger foundation because those tough times are going to come.

I never would have thought I was going to be in a car accident.

When we were holding hands, I wasn't thinking Linda was going to have a heart attack or I wasn't thinking we were going to do financial struggles because I thought that happened to everybody else.

Happened to the people on TV or the people next door.

No, it happened to us.

But we had a strong commitment.

We were all in and whatever we found, put our hands to do, we did now as a decision.

But now we're able to say after 47 years, we're still married and love it.

And it's too now the key point there is 47 years to each other.

We hung, we stuck it out through those times.

When we got married, I remember the, the Guy sang our song, remember this dear?

He says, let us climb this mountain together.

But it was a wedding song.

But yeah, you know, climbing a mountain could be a good thing.

But a lot of times mountains, a challenge and we didn't know what to speak.

That happens other people.

But you got to be all in.

You got to do it with all your might.

So in other words, don't be a 50% person.

Go over and above.

That's what good customer service is in life.

Go do more than what's expected.

Can you do that?

Yes.

Can you look over at your spouse?

I know they're not maybe with you right now, but think about, can you do above and beyond what is expected?

Go the extra mile on your marriage.

That's what it means when you put your hand, do with all your might.

Be all in it to win it.

And so if you're going to be in it to win it, how do you need to dress?

Well, it would bring us to the next point would be dress up for your marriage.

Oh, and well, we got dressed up for our wedding.

Right.

So how about the marriage?

That's the.

After we got undressed for the honeymoon.

Didn'T we can undress honeymoon.

But for the, for your marriage, you got to think about it everyday life.

Yes.

You know, and we're talking about in your marriage, it's not the external dressing up, which, you know, that part's good too.

But more importantly is the internal part of it.

What, what type of clothes do you want to be wearing for your spouse?

Or flip it over a little bit.

What type of clothes do you want your spouse to wear?

Yeah, so these are things that we want to look at and they, they affect every day, you know, are we putting on love?

Are we, each day we have that ability, we have that choice to put on love.

And here's some things.

What not to wear.

Colossians 3:5 through 9 talks about as we become a new creature in Christ or just thinking about these things that we want to put off, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech.

How many times do we say things were like, oops, I should have never said that, that really, that really hurt or you know, putting off a bad temperature or being irritable and mean.

This is all in God's word.

Talk about dirty talk, profanity, that sort of thing.

Well, the message Bible translation actually says that you're done with the old life and it's like a filthy set of ill fitting clothes that you stripped off and put in the fire.

Well, like an example, Greg's been out blowing the leaves.

And the other day he came in from blowing the leaves and he smelled like the blower.

All gas and everything.

It was all over the place, all over his shirt, all over his pants.

And I'm like, oh, you smell like gas.

And so he had to go take all that off and put on something that did not smell so bad.

But same way with us, eternally, we will put on a bad temper, or we might put on being irritable and we might just say mean things.

Yeah.

And we always end up saying it to the person we love the most.

Yeah.

Usually that's the way it is.

So we want to be aware, you know, be mindful of the fact to take these things off and put on love.

It's a decision to take these old things off.

And a lot of people will say, you know, that's just the way that I am.

Yeah.

You know, my mom was like that or my dad was like that.

They were just.

That's just.

And I'm going to be just like that, too.

Well, no, you don't have to be that way.

We have control over that.

We have control over how we can talk.

And.

And that brings us on what to wear?

What do we want to wear?

You know, Can I interrupt?

Just.

Yeah, do.

This can be tied into just dressing for success.

You want to look your best for your spouse.

You know, you go in for a job interview or maybe you're going to church one day, oh, I want to look all nice.

How many times you see a TV show where the kids come running down the stairs and they got the wrong type of clothes on?

They're not dressed properly.

So what's mom and dad say?

Go change.

Go back upstairs.

Somebody's going to work.

And the spouse looks at them and they go, are you wearing that?

The work today, you got a coffee stain on it.

It's wrinkled.

You're going to wear that.

What do they do?

They say, okay, they go up and they change clothes.

They made a decision to go up and change clothes.

Just like Linda says, we use these excuses.

Well, that's the way I am.

No, you can make a decision to change what you're wearing past, not for your clothes, but internally.

What?

Like Linda saying, you can't use excuses.

God gives us the power to change clothes, but we have to make that decision.

Even if you don't have God in your life, you can still make a decision to wear a blue shirt instead of a green shirt.

So that's what we're talking about.

But what's on the inside of us because we want to look good, smell good and give the best impression we can to those people around us, especially our spouse.

So we want to, we need to know what to wear.

Right?

It's kind of like that old TV show it was on years ago, what's called what not to Wear.

Oh yes.

These people would be wearing the wrong type of clothes.

They made them look fat, they made them look skinny, they didn't look fin, they didn't look professional for what they wanted to do.

So that's what we're talking about here.

So go ahead and say so internally.

It's Colossians 10, 12, 13 and it says put on the new self.

And some of these things, I'm just going to list them out is a heart of compassion.

How many times do we just don't give mercy or grace to our spouse when we really ought to be having that heart of compassion?

Being kind.

Think about that.

Just be kind.

That's all you got to do.

Humility, gentleness, patience, bearing one another, forgiving.

Oh my goodness, that.

I think we mentioned that a couple times in the last couple episodes, but that is a biggie.

Offering up forgiveness.

Don't be holding a grudge or be criticizing or, you know, judging this.

Just forgive and be even tempered, disciplined and content with being second place.

It's okay if you're serving your spouse.

You're putting yourself after your spouse.

Put yourself before yourself, prefer your spouse.

What can you do to offer them?

You know, somehow to be nice to them?

You know, like I will wake up in the morning and just ask the Lord, hey, what can I do today that would really help Greg?

It might be something really little.

What would it be to help put together his snack bag for the rest of the day or you know, something like that.

What could I cook that he would like?

You know, just little things even to prefer your spouse.

Yeah.

It could be like, like we're getting ready to go off somewhere and Linda and I say we want to leave at 9:30.

Well, it's about 9:36 and Linda still thinking about deciding what to wear.

What do I wear externally?

Right.

Literally.

Right.

And now it's getting later.

Then was this work and this work and I have a choice.

Right.

Then as put on the new self.

You gotta look at your, your inward feelings as taken off a piece of clothes and put another one on.

Literally.

If I'm waiting and say we need to go, the traffic's getting heavy, we're gonna be late, I have to make a decision right Then to pull off impatience, see it as pulling it off and setting it to the side and then walking over and say, I need to put on patience and I need to do it now.

But you see it as putting on a coat or a pair, a shirt and putting it on.

So it's a decision.

And sometimes those decisions are split second decisions.

That's true because it's like, and you're in the kitchen and somebody messes up the food or leaves a mess and, and one spouse loses their voice and starts ranting or getting mad and the other person has that one quick one liner, right?

Then in a split second, are you going to put on love and kindness and mercy and grace?

Are you going to put on more anger?

It's a split second decision.

So the final piece of closing, Linda, just read Colossians where it says all these things.

It says compassion, kindness, humility, patience, etc, it goes on to everything.

And then Colossians 3, it says, and beyond all those other things, put on love.

It's like doing all that's not enough.

Doing all that's not enough.

You need to put on love.

Wear love as your overcoat, which brings everything together.

It's like you can guys have the shirt and tie on pants, but they put that jacket, coat on, it just brings the outfit together.

The ladies accessorize, they put on the shoes and you know, you just can't take a wife shopping and buy a new blouse because then once you buy the blouse, you may have to buy pants.

Then they got to have some earrings that match that.

And then maybe the show, they got to have new shoes, you know, they.

Have, and a purse.

And that's another story.

Yeah.

Oh, oh, oh boy.

There's a Christmas list for somebody.

Oh boy.

But you got to be properly dressed.

You know what, Just to bring this up, if you're not, if you're wearing clothes that don't feel good, they make you look a certain way or they're too tight and you just, you just don't feel easy.

Oh, I need to go change.

You're not comfortable.

Yeah, that's why we need to listen to our spirit.

Because maybe we're talking a certain way to somebody or we're thinking something and we kind of, or we said something, we're kind of, oh, this is, I don't feel good in this.

Very nice.

Yeah, it's like the conscious, the Holy Spirit, the conscious come in and say, oh, that wasn't very nice, or you shouldn't do that, or put on patience.

That's our Spirit inside our soul, our heart, saying, you're not dressed properly.

Let's put on that love.

Let's put on kindness right now.

Take a moment, change clothes.

Because when you go out in public like this, you're not going to be pretty.

If you come home mad because of the traffic and you got chewed out at work, you need to put on some clothes.

Change clothes before you get do your Superman, Find a phone booth, change your outfit, Put on love and all these other characteristics because you want to be pleasing when you come around your spouse.

You want to present yourself properly because first impressions, well, you walk in that door with a negative impression, it could ruin the whole evening for you.

So what are you wearing?

What's proper dress brings unity and peace in the home.

Yes, that's what it says.

It goes on.

It says it brings unity, which brings peace.

So how you dress inwardly impacts your marriage.

So that's why we say enjoy life with the wife or spouse you love all the days of your life.

This is love.

You have to put it on.

It just doesn't happen when you say the vowels.

It's a commitment.

It's not a feeling, it's a decision.

And it brings to action.

So more in quest.

So the question is, what are you wearing today?

It reminds me of the bracelet that so many people have gotten.

What would Jesus do?

You know?

Oh, yeah, what would Jesus do?

Remember that?

Yeah, what would Jesus do?

And I love wearing that bracelet because the split second that Greg was talking about where we could just do a big jab and that would just feel really good for a bit.

It would feel really good.

I get to make that decision to think about what would Jesus do.

Well, Jesus would put on love.

Yeah.

You know, I get to make that decision to put on love and to not get that jab in or to not say whatever it is that was coming out of my mouth before I actually had time to think about it, you know?

Yeah, that's good.

So what are we wearing?

You know, we're going into the holidays and starting.

You get this was going to come out on Tuesday, right before Thanksgiving.

For the next four weeks, you're going to be busy.

Now, if you listen to episodes 7 and 8, you may not be quite as busy if you apply what you learned in that those episodes, but life's going to be hitting us.

Fun stuff, sugar.

Oh, yeah.

Some y'all might be drinking alcohol.

Some of y'all got lots of caffeine going on.

Parties, families to get.

You got stuff going on.

So pack an extra few Shirts of love.

There you go.

Because you're gonna need it.

You let your light shine out at all these activities.

If things get a little crazy or the traffic's bad.

Driving, driving to New York, somebody said they were gonna be driving this weekend and going through Baltimore and Washington D.C.

and they already knew the traffic was being, was going to be terrible.

Might as well just.

He basically the guy, the husband said, you know what?

I just got to accept it.

That's the way it's going to be.

Well, you know what he was kind of doing?

He was putting on love in a sense.

He was already realizing.

He was realizing.

So he wasn't going to allow himself to get aggravated.

And that way the car ride could still be pleasant.

So plan ahead.

Pack some extra love.

Take you an extra bag of love and kindness so you can put it on when your favorite uncle, your favorite brother or sister comes around.

You be the one to do that.

Or together as a marriage.

How.

You know, sometimes those people aggravate and cause your marriage relationship to have a lot of tension.

Yes.

Right.

Yes.

Be your spouse's breath of fresh air.

Yes.

Have the clothes on that smell nice and fresh when you get around your spouse.

Because, you know, when you get, you know, really, when you get around all the hustle bustle, you should be able to find your spouse and get a good little hug, get your 10 second kiss or something and let that be the sweet spot of wherever you're at.

That's.

That is great.

Yes.

That's good.

That's good wisdom right there.

Yes.

Yeah, thank you.

That's what happens when you've been married for 47 years.

You learn these things.

You may forget a lot of them, but you learn.

I trained you well.

Yes, you did.

She doesn't.

She wouldn't want to.

She wouldn't want to ever go with somebody else because she'd have to retrain.

Oh, my gosh.

I'd have to start over.

Not going to do that.

47 years.

Still working on it.

All right, well, I think that's everything.

We have some homework.

Yes.

And before that, I want to pray.

I feel like I need to.

Yeah, do that, Father.

Right now.

I pray over everybody who is listening to our podcast as we go into the next four to five weeks.

As we finish off this year, as we're celebrating Thanksgiving and the holidays and Jesus birth, Christmas and the new year, I just speak peace over everybody as no matter what their schedule is, if it's just a couple people getting together or multitudes of families coming together, we speak Peace.

I ask that in the midst of everything going on that they can take a deep breath, trust in you, receive your grace and mercy and your power and the ability to, to slow down, to enjoy the moments, to.

To be aware of their inner person that says put on love.

Put on love at this point where they can slow down and love and not get caught up with stuff going on, whether in traffic or checking out at the grocery store or just sitting around and something's going on around the house.

I just speak peace.

Peace.

Peace.

I thank you, Lord, for your love being shed abroad and everybody's heart and that love will come out of them.

And we just thank you for a great prosperous end of the year.

Yes, we thank you, Lord God, for Thanksgiving being an awesome time.

And it's a time we can be thankful for what you're doing in our lives and what you're doing in our marriages as we finish off this year and press into next year.

And we give you glory and honor for it all in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

Now do the homework, honey.

Do homework.

First of all, do any value a self evaluation of your internal closet and decide what not to wear.

You know how you go in your closet and you clean stuff out?

Say, I don't, I don't like that outfit anymore.

That doesn't fit me right.

Well, take it out of your closet and trash it.

Do that self evaluation of your internal closet.

Like, you know what?

I don't like that I was so ugly with my words.

So throw that out.

Yes.

Figure out what you want to keep.

Decide to put on love.

Yeah, yeah, get rid of your old clothes.

You know, when people lose, lose clothes sometimes lose weight.

Yeah, they lose weight.

They'll.

Oh, I want to hold on to these in case, just in case.

Gain it back.

No, get rid of them.

Burn the bridges.

Yes.

Like I was saying, throw away your old clothes so you won't fall.

That's right.

Decide you're not going to act that way anymore.

And the next part of the homework is ask yourself, are you all in?

Are you in it to win it with your spouse?

Whether you've been married for six weeks or six years or 60 years, is your commitment still there?

Are you all in?

Is your attitude there?

I'm still going to do what I can do to make our marriage success.

And then the number third one is.

Guess what it is.

Let me guess, let me guess.

Oh, go ahead.

The ten second.

Yes, you got it.

When we are hustle bustle, so crazy busy.

Yes.

Stop and take 10 seconds.

Just 10 seconds.

Yep.

And kiss your spouse.

You want to tell them how to do it?

Oh, just pull them up to you.

Set your timer for 10 seconds.

Unless you got a good grip on things and give them a good old 10 second kiss.

Or longer.

And get creative.

But that's like Linda said in the Hustle Bustle.

I don't know, you can be in the kitchen with everybody cooking your Thanksgiving dinner.

Think about that.

You're cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

That's the perfect time.

Hustle Bustle.

You just stop and give your spouse a 10 second kiss.

Yeah.

It doesn't have to be.

When you're just running out.

Somebody will probably say, go get a room.

But you know what, there's going to be some people in there going, how did they do that?

I wish me and my wife could do that.

Your light can shine in many different ways and sometimes it's that 10 seconds kiss or you're given a hug.

In the midst of everything going on, your marriage can make a difference in somebody else's life.

That's right.

And you can say, we are married and love it on purpose.

Yes.

Amen.

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