Dov & Chris Talk Marriage

6 · Chris and Dov unpack the weight of the calling in Ephesians 5

Okay, that's great. It's great. It's also heavy. Yeah, a lot in that hymn we read—what did it say? It says something about God's 'prostrate before His awful seat.' And the old way of using 'awful' is how sweet and awful it is to be as men in our marriages. That old way of thinking of 'awful' comes into play—like, it's an awe-filled kind of thing. Yeah. To be Christ in a relationship, explicitly, not in some generic way, but to be really like the model of Christ in a marriage. And that fundamentally means a call to sacrifice yourself for the joy—for the eternal joy, the eternal good—of the other. Yeah. It's a sobering, serious, heavy, weighty responsibility to love your wife as Christ loved the church.

7 · Introduces a critical nuance: sacrifice is according to God's will, not merely the wife's expressed desires

Related to that, we've got just basic ideas here. We are called to sacrifice for our wife. Real quickly, you mentioned this yesterday in the sermon about how the man who's an invalid—he has this plan, he wants to—he needs someone to take him down and put him in the pool, and Jesus wants to help him but He's not going to do it that guy's way. He's going to do it the way that's the right way according to Jesus. And I'm just thoughtful here when it says we are to sacrifice for our wife according to the will and plan of God, not merely according to the wishes of our wives. Yeah, another way to say it would be we are to sacrifice for our wife but not to our wife. Yes. That's a good point.

8 · Defines sanctification as progressive conformity to Christ and ties it to the Ephesians 5 vision of presentation

Okay. We are to pursue our wife's sanctification. How would you define sanctification? Progressive course of becoming more like Christ—more like Jesus. So progressive sanctification, progress to become more like Christ over time. Okay, from one degree of glory to the next. Yep. All right. And we will one day present our wives to the Lord.

9 · The analogy of the car restoration project illustrates misdirected devotion—time and skill poured into an object rather than a person

We are both fans of a lot of what CJ Mahaney has taught and exemplified related to marriage, both in his own marriage but also when he teaches on it. He talks about studying your wife, about making your wife sort of a key, a primary area of your intellectual interest and attention and so forth. I sometimes think about how much I've—back in my day, or at least where I lived, it was pretty common to find these old guys working on a GTO or something, doing projects that were, you know—and so they were home but not really home. And, you know, at the end of that, whatever, you know, take them five years or whatever to do this beautiful restoration on a car or something, it's like they presented this car to the family. It's like, 'Look what I did.' And it's like, 'Yeah, it's like great, but...' At some point early on in my life I realized that Ephesians 5 was telling me I should do that with my wife. And that's what Jesus did. Yeah. So Jesus did with the church. And so that requires time and attention and so forth. But the cool thing is, is that at the end I don't just like present that to the world or something—I present that to God. And I say, 'Here, I tried, thanks to Your grace in me, to leave this gal better than I found her.' Yeah. To help her to be more like Jesus and so forth. Yeah. And I think part of it also is just taking what we're experiencing as men from God—His care for us—and then expressing that to our wives and passing it along. Like, we are—like, God is restoring us, right? And so experiencing that, receiving that from the Lord, and then passing it on.

10 · A pastoral warning against intellectual zeal for authority without corresponding humility born from experiencing God's patient sanctification

We're—you know, every church has a little bit of a particular alignment with other sort of cultural things happening in the larger church, and I wouldn't say that we're one-for-one connected to the 'theobro' world or the 'patriarchy' world or anything like that. Sure. But I do think that if people are looking—if people that are oriented in that direction are looking for a church, Providence might be one of the churches that they would choose. And I always feel like the great evidence of a young man being like gung-ho about authority and leadership and he's going to make a mess of things is when he doesn't actually have a clear understanding of the grace, the work of grace, in his own life and how God has patiently and carefully and meticulously trimmed him into the man he is, you know. Yeah. Young men that don't understand the amount of godly patience that has been exhibited on their behalf by the saints, by their parents, by—right—by the Lord, they don't understand how to sanctify someone else if they themselves haven't really processed carefully how they have been sanctified. Yeah. And so, yeah, you're talking about like passing down what you're experiencing in your own relationship with the Lord. When you start being very intellectually convicted but heart-convicted—you are a work in progress, that you know you are a great sinner and need a great Savior, that you really are nothing without the mercy of God—until those things are really in you, you can get all of the intellectual knowledge of headship and leadership pretty quickly, but knowing how to use it in a way that honors God, in a way that God actually likes, requires you to be very aware of your own sanctification journey, I guess. Yeah. That's a great point. Just how it's progressive, how patient God has been. You know, I think Paul talks about how he's the chief of sinners and how God's been more patient with him than with anyone else, just as an example of God's perfect patience with him. That's a great point. And then you can not only pass along the sanctifying—like, here's some truth—but speaking the truth in love. It's a great point.

11 · Chris expands on the complexity and variety of God's sanctifying work

We're still recording, by the way. Oh, good, good. That's encouraging. I remembered to check. Oh, I'll try not to go off the rails too bad. No, I mean, this is like—we could—I mean, even if we just talked about sanctification, yeah, it really is—like, if you've not thought about this, guys, you need to. Parenting helps, by the way, with a lot of this. Sure. You begin to learn a lot more about how people change when you parent. But even just the way that God doesn't—God uses all sorts of different ways of sanctifying you. Sometimes it's by a positive example that that person doesn't even know that they're being used by God to convict you of something or encourage you in some way. Sometimes it's by—God will give you—he'll take one layer of a sin off in one season through one kind of stimulus, and then there's more of the onion to peel. But that's going to be a different thing, a completely different thing—you know, a sickness, whatever. And He's going to use all these different stimuli to make this change. And you begin to realize, you know, Ephesians 2—we are His poiema, we are His workmanship, we are His epic poem, we are His—and what you're really seeing there is is that this master craftsman who created reality is at work in shaping you in a million different ways to become more like Christ. If you—one of the areas I would encourage men to think about with sanctification is not just that you need saving too and all those simplistic platitudes that we talk about where it's like, 'Well, I'm a sinner too' and so on and so forth—that's true, but also think of how God is so masterful and thoughtful and skilled in the various ways that He brings your sin to your attention, brings you into conviction. You think you're sorry, and then a year later you realize, 'Well, I wasn't as sorry as I thought I was. There's more repentance to be had here' and so forth. The carefulness of God, the wisdom of God. And what that winds up doing in terms of sanctification, fundamentally just leadership, spiritual leadership, is it allows you to see the work that you're putting in to help someone else grow in their sanctification. It doesn't all have to come at once and in one way. It can come across a spectrum of your relationship with them in different seasons, in different stimuli, in different methods and so forth. And like you said, if you don't—if you're not grateful for the way God has handled you and somewhat aware of it, obviously, you will really not—you're not ready for prime time when it comes to taking care of somebody else.

12 · Dov and Chris affirm that patience with one's wife flows from gratitude for God's patience with oneself

Yeah. And all that will engender faith for your wife, right? Like, God has been so patient with me—that'll help me be humble, it'll help me have faith because I've seen that God's worked in me and so I can trust that God will work in my wife. And just patience and gentleness—like, we don't have to be the Holy Spirit, right? We don't have to hammer our wives with truth. We can be gentle and patient with them as God's gentle and patient with us. Yeah, and I mean, sometimes you hammer them with truth, but it doesn't have to be the only thing you use. Right, yeah, true. Yes, it's just one of the tools. Right, right. And I think that's how God is, like—right, there are down moments and times where God has just flattened me. Yes. Not many, you know, relatively speaking to how much I deserve that. But still, He does. To not think that you need to—and that's young men, it's not so much that I'm, you know—it's easy to think that me at my age, I'm just a compromised guy and, you know, I'm tired and I don't have any zeal anymore or anything. But no, actually the answer is is that when you're young you know two notes, you know, and you keep playing those over and over and over again, and you think something's going to happen. It's like, 'Well, go get some more notes, man.' Yeah. Like, go get some more tools. And the way we get those tools fundamentally is by just reflecting on the varied kindness of God and the way that He's walked with us. The experience of God's care, God's personal care for us. It's good.

13 · A foundational quote from CJ Mahaney is introduced to anchor the theological vision of marriage as a reflection of Christ and the church

And that's really what the point of marriage is to a great degree. You've got this quote from CJ. Yep. So a lot of the concepts we're going to talk about—a lot of quotes from CJ's book 'Sex, Romance and the Glory of God'—we're going to use today as foundational thoughts for our talk. But on—he says—'Marriage between a man and a woman is meant to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church. It's about being genuinely united in a strong, godly, intimate relationship. Something of the selfless love, care, and sacrifice that Jesus shows toward the church is supposed to be evident in you as you relate to your wife.' Yep. Amen. Yep.

14 · Chris introduces a postmillennial, mission-oriented vision of marriage

Now I need—this isn't in our outline, but I want to drop a postmillennial—we're going to go off outline. Yeah, can you imagine? I want to drop a bit of a postmill perspective on some of this. So I think this will help at a couple of layers. And one of the first layers would be something like, 'How do I know what the priority of my wife's sanctification ought to be?' Like, you know, my wife—my wife in particular, she's a sinner in a lot of different areas. You know, she's just a—very—no, she—you know, all people have lots of sins. Yeah. And figuring out what to bring to someone's attention and whatnot, figuring out how to triage these things, yeah, it's complex. There's probably two main schools of thought. The first one would be like, 'What is bothering me the most?' Right? So I'm going to aim for my wife's sanctification based on those things that she does that I don't like. Right. Okay, that's one possibility. Right, that's one way of figuring out what to prioritize. Another would be something like—it's a little bit better would be something like, 'What is most harmful to her?' You know. That could be another way. Yeah. But I think the proper way, the proper biblical way, is that you're supposed to be walking together on a mission. Marriage is actually fundamentally—going all the way back to the beginning—about the accomplishment of a very specific mission. Sure. To rule and subdue by being fruitful, multiplying. And so when you are on a team and the mission is defined, then you can look around at the strengths and weaknesses of the team members as it relates to the mission and say, 'My wife has ten flaws, but which one is going to affect the mission the most?' Clearly. And a lot of times that's fear for women. It's not always fear, but a lot of times that's the one. And First Peter 3 talks about that. But anyway, there's a few things about this mission thing that I think are important. The first is, if your marriage isn't about something more than your marriage, you're in an idolatrous marriage. Yes. And you could go broad and say, 'Our marriage is to glorify God.' Lots of Christians say that. Well, that's almost too broad to be actionable and almost too broad to clearly give you a sense of priority and help you know what to say yes to and what to say no to and so on and so forth. It needs to be a little narrower than that. You know, I think that—I think that the thing that's worked for us, my wife and I, is we were very comfortable making our children a priority over other people. So first of all, that's a real obvious mission—like, raise these kids to love Jesus, right? Keep them safe, you know, protect them from the enemy and so on. Right, so that's a mission. But I think for us the second-tier mission was always just been to use our marriage to support the church. And, you know, I don't think that's mostly vocational. I mean, I can see why it would be easier for us to realize that that's important—you know, that's part of my job. Right. But I also—just Angela and I to this day would probably say, you know, the most important advice we could give anybody in life, and certainly those that are married, is use your life to serve God's bride. Use your life to serve the thing God loves the most, and you'll always wind up being happy that you did that. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I think that like, you know, all of these marriage principles—actually, if we don't encapsulate them into some sort of a mission, they almost become sort of like idolatrous. Like, 'How do we have the marriage that makes us most fulfilled or that makes us the happiest?' Yeah, and so on. Yeah, that's a great—so I think all these things are really good, but it's important to remember that the first marriage occurred within a mission-fulfillment kind of idea, and that Jesus—as the second Adam—and the church is the second Eve in some respects, His bride, and that God gave Jesus the church as a means of ruling and subduing and fulfilling the original creation mandate, you know, times ten. I don't mean to say just the creation mandate. Sure. But that Jesus as the new and better Adam has a wife, and that they are on mission together. And so I would just say like, mission is actually extremely important when you're thinking, in particular, about how to make choices in general in life. You need to understand what your mission is. And then when you're thinking of like, 'How do I help this person grow in sanctification? Well, how do you know what to pick?' It's like, 'Well, is there something that's evidently related to the mission?' What's the mission? So for me, you know, there have been things that I didn't prioritize that might have been a little bit more aggravating to me about my wife when there were other things that were like, 'Dude, if you don't'—to my wife—'if you don't figure this out, we can't do what we're supposed to do.' Right. And, 'How do I help you figure this out?' And vice versa. So that's been helpful for us too, because it doesn't become just a 'Let's talk about the things that annoy each other about each other.' Right. And it doesn't also become some sort of like moral high ground where I'm like, 'I'm really just working for your best' and, you know, so on. It can be a little bit more concrete than that and just say, 'What are we called to do, and what about us right now would prevent us from doing that well unless we fixed it?' So it's a great point.

15 · Transitions from mission to priority

It's a great point. So that gets us to the priority of marriage. And this is, I think, related to all of this. Just the importance of making your marriage kind of a central thing—not because it is the central thing, but I would say, I would argue, that because it's a central tool. Yeah. But anyway, this is a great quote.

16 · A CJ Mahaney quote (citing John Wing) establishes the priority of spousal love over all other human loves, including love for children

Yeah. So, 'How common it is today for people to say things like "My kids are the most important thing in the world to me." Well, guys, for you and me as Christian husbands, it's just unacceptable attitude. It's clearly unbiblical.' And this is CJ speaking. He's saying, 'A husband's love for his wife, as Puritan preacher John Wing put it, must be "the most dear, intimate, precious, and entire that heart can have toward a creature. None but the love of God is above it, none but the love of ourselves is fellow to it, all the love of others is inferior to it." In short, love of husband and wife for one another should plainly exceed in intensity and scope all other human loves.' Yeah.

17 · Chris unpacks the practical implications of spousal priority

And essentially, I would say this is probably both a male and female problem. Your spouse needs to be clear, in particular with those things that are not more important, that you don't love them more than you love. And I think that it's sort of like, none of—very few of us actually do love our jobs more than we love our wives. But our jobs will ask things of us. Right. Sure. And very few women actually love their kids more than they love their husbands. Right. But the kids will—the kids will ask time, and there's no—they have no dignity to, you know—the kids, they're—and so they're happy to ask. And so—but I will say it's real easy to start noticing your wife—it doesn't seem like she really is as interested in you as she is in taking care of the kids or the things she has going or so on. Sure. Sure. Wives will feel the same about their husbands, whether—especially during demanding seasons of work or when the Chiefs are making a playoff run or, you know, back in my home area, hunting season. But, you know what I mean, though? Yeah. It's—I don't think that it's necessarily usually true, right, that the spouse isn't number one. But really this becomes pretty important in the sense of: if the other individual who is normally reasonable and sober-minded—if your wife is normally reasonable and sober-minded and she's saying, 'It feels to me like X, Y, and Z are more important'—right, then you need to figure out how to adjust. Yeah. Men will often not say that to their wives, but they will feel it. And the wives—and they will often not say it because they feel like they're being creepy or not creepy, but they're being selfish, because the thing that men typically feel like they're competing with are the children. Right. Right. And so a common thing—like, this would be—for women it would look something like it's 8 p.m. and you have no sexual energy left, you know, at all, and you've spent all your energy on the kids and so forth. And you just, you know, your wife—yeah. And you're the wife and you're just like, 'Uh, I'm sorry, I've done all I can. I can't,' you know. And so forth. A guy will hear that X number of times and eventually would be reasonable to make the conclusion that my kids are more important to my wife than I am. And it's the same with dudes—dudes do the same thing. And with—right, 'Let me check my email' or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So it really needs to be this sense of—you have to be careful. You don't want to be whiny about it, and you don't want to make everything about you all the time. Right. And the truth is is that when my wife does sometimes put my kids first, it's for my glory ultimately. Right. Like, if she does great things with my kids, like, that's—I'm happy about that, my kids. And if I kill myself—work 80 hours a week—it's really for my wife in many respects. Right. And so I would just say that it's very important that each spouse feel that the other one is putting them first. Right. My wife is the most important. I read this book—I think just be reminded. And Angela and I have noticed over the years that sometimes just winning the approval of someone other than your spouse feels better than winning the approval of your spouse because you already have it. Right. And so like little opportunities like, you know, to do things can pop up—like a project at work or something like that—and now you've got this other place to like win some approval and impress some people. Right. Right. And it's like you—you think—well, you know, this is—I didn't know this is conscious, of course, but right—you think, 'Well, you know, I've already got my wife's approval. It would really be nice to get somebody else's approval.' Right. You know. And so you just have to watch out for these things and understand that you're, you know, we're sinners. The other piece of this is to know that this may be something you're feeling, and you might not have words for it. You may just feel like you're not number one to your spouse at the time. And you need to, in a non-violent—meaning not accusatory—way, right, just take some time and just say, 'Hey, I feel like this is going on. I don't think you're to blame or anything. Right. I'm just letting you know that it's starting to feel this way. If we could make some adjustments so that, you know, it feels like I'm your number one and you're my number one.' There's a way to do this that doesn't accuse, it doesn't make the person responsible for how you feel. Exactly. I would just say like, keep a short leash on this one. This can build the resentment, and it can create sort of parallel lives that are full of just all sorts of nastiness. Yeah. You got to advocate for your marriage. Like you said, if marriage is so key to our mission in our lives and in our families, we've got to advocate for them. And there's nothing wrong with speaking up and saying, 'Hey, this is how I'm feeling.' Yeah. In a gentle, kind way. And also just to say, like, 'I'm not even arguing that I'm right.' Right. 'I'm just communicating this is what I—this is how I'm perceiving.' Right. Right. Good. Good.

18 · A foundational quote from CJ Mahaney on stewardship

All right. So we have a quote. There we go. We have a quote about stewarding our marriage. So if our marriage is such a weighty, sober, high priority in our lives, we make sure we're stewarding our marriage as well. So there's this quote—CJ says, 'My marriage will not grow as it should if I do not attend to it consistently. Under God's loving sovereignty, I, not my wife, am the keeper of the garden that is my marriage.' It's very hard—what it means to be a God-appointed leader in my home. So just the—like, as the man, as the husband, this is—I own this. This is my responsibility to take care of, to tend to, to like a garden, watch over, be the keeper of my marriage.

19 · Chris uses the analogy of car maintenance to illustrate husbandly stewardship

Yeah. And, you know, of course there have been many times when my wife will come to me and say, 'I think maybe we should do this' or 'You know, we should make this change' or so forth. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. But there's no point in which that should become expected of her or that I should rely on her to do that. I should be the one who's keeping track of the machine. Like, I should be the one who's making sure that it's okay, and I should be thinking about it enough to understand where we are, how we can improve. Yeah. We should be the primary initiators in our marriage. Yeah. And we should be the ones who think about it more in some respects as a thing, you know. It's kind of like God put us in this institution. It's kind of like a machine—it needs maintenance, it has, you know, parts and different aspects to it. Men need to have a kind of a, you know, mechanic's proficiency with the dynamics of their marriage. You know, when I buy a car, it's glorious if you—and this happens sometimes—this is kind of why some of us like buying cars from German people. You buy a car from someone—they give you a three-ring notebook of all the maintenance records. Yeah. It's all like, 'Oh, you know, we had a timing chain put in at this thing' and so forth. And this guy or whatever—he's tracked all this because he wants to understand, you know, where he is with this thing he's been entrusted. Right. Sure. And you can't take your marriage for granted, man. You can't. Yeah. You can't drive your car without checking it every once in a while. You can't take your marriage for granted. Men need to be the ones who are really paying attention to that. And if you have the constantly—she's constantly whining about one of the big things is like, that would put her at ease so she would be like, 'He's got this.' Yeah. Or are you—you know, are you the—you know, are you the guy? Sometimes I get into particular modes in driving that are really distracted, and I'm thinking about a million things. And when my wife yells at me in those times while I'm driving, it's kind of like, 'Well, what do I expect?' I—nothing about my approach to driving right now is communicating diligence, competency—'You can relax,' you know. And so in those moments, like, 'Well, I kind of deserve it because I'm not showcasing, you know, a competency level.' Right. Right. If you will just grow into a pattern of being the guy who is reliably coming to your wife and saying, 'Hey, I noticed we don't—I noticed we've been looking at our phones a little bit too much at night,' or 'Hey, I noticed this or this,' if you're the one who keeps saying 'I'm noticing,' yeah, they'll relax. They will relax, and you will—you will much appreciate that environment. But a lot of you guys are—you know, you feel like harassed when your wife has concerns. And first of all, she may or may not be right in her concerns. But really what you need to understand is what's going on there. She would love to put her seat back—like my wife does in the car when I'm paying attention. My wife's an instant recline girl. She trusts you. Well, yeah. Sometimes, anyway. Your wife would love to do that with many things, including your marriage. Sure. You just need to demonstrate 'I'm paying attention. I'm reading the marriage books. I'm thinking.' Right. So now the bar has been set.

20 · A long application section on communication

How do we do this, right? Like, practically, like, how do we keep our marriage? How do we tend to our marriage? We've got some practicals here. No, it's—you've got it all wrong here. But if you marry the wrong one, you just divorce or get another one, and then you'll—that one won't work probably either. It takes like five tries. Isn't that isn't that the way the world does this? I think that is the way the world does it. The way that they do it is is that 'I want the perfect marriage, but I don't want to like put in the work and so change myself. So I'll just keep pulling the marriage slot machine until I get—until I land on cherries or whatever the thing is.' No, that's not how we do it. Yes. We do that way, or we could—or we could look at three areas of communication. This is something—so the main idea: be in touch with each other. Stay engaged. We got some practical questions you can ask. So, 'What is your purpose? Where do you feel God calling you to grow right now?' Just all good questions that—'Where are you in your cycle?' Yes. Yes. That's a very good question to know about. They're—after that, you don't have to ask. You can pay attention to that one too, guys. You don't have to ask. So you can all—we can all download the same app. So yes. So there's all these questions you can ask your wife to be proactive and so that she can put the seat down in her car and relax a little bit and know that you're keeping tabs on what's going on in the relationship. Yep. You're watching out for her. That you're looking and you're looking out for her good. You can ask her, 'How are things with the kids going? I feel like things at church are going—' Practically, like, 'Do you need anything around the house right now? Do you need like a gadget or like some maintenance?' Like, you're seeing—really, one of—this—the shelf in the kitchen. So I'm like, 'What do you want for Christmas?' And she's like, 'Well, I want a shelf in the kitchen so I could put my whatever stuff up there.' And so just, 'What do you need to make your life better and easier around the house?' Pause there for a second. This is a big Doug Wilson lesson I really like. And that is, if you want your wife to manage your home, don't be as stingy. Yeah. I don't know how he talks about it, but basically, yeah, you know, give what you need to—doing things well requires certain kind of tools. Yeah. And of course we want to be thrifty, and we want our wives to be thrifty as well. But also you need to like understand, if you want your wife to do the thing God's created her to do, you gotta—you gotta fund it. Yeah. It's like you show up at work and they've got the laptop where you're ready to go on day one. Yeah. You give the tools that you need to be successful in your job. They're managing the house. They're watching the kids, doing whatever. Yeah. They need the tools too. So don't be afraid to get them a dust buster or something. I wouldn't recommend that for Mother's Day. That didn't go over so well. Let's—for another podcast. So, all right. You can ask, you know, 'Is there anything that you're struggling with right now? Is there anything that's on your mind now that you just want to talk about?' And all that assumes you need to have a context for communication. A few different ideas. Like, 'I'm'—away from the table, take 10, 15 minutes and talk. And just say, 'Kids, we are going—' a better way to say it, but each other. 'And we're gonna do that.' Just keep telling them that over and over again. I remember one time when I was a youth pastor, we and I went to this marriage conference, and all the youth found out about it and thought we were, you know, having a problem. Okay. You know, our marriage problems—'We're going to a marriage conference.' We just kept telling them, like, 'No, like, it's just something you do. You just do this stuff. You don't wait for there to be a problem.' And they still—they still didn't believe us. Anyway, as we're driving away, it was like a bunch of kids came to the house and said jokingly, you know, 'We hope you come back stronger.' And anyway, it was pretty cute. But what an example that's setting for the kids in the youth group and for your kids as well. And for anyone who's—just kids, like, 'We need 10, 50 minutes just to talk and be in touch.' And, yeah, like, that's part of the marriage, is setting a great example for your kids. They'll carry that on in the future. Yeah. And it makes them feel so much safer. Yeah. When they're married. And we—we tell our kids, like, 'Mom and Dad are in a club you're not invited. You can't join it ever. Like, we are in a club.' And, you know, we wouldn't like throw it in their face all the time, but at the same time there was this sense of 'We—you guys—you guys, if you know what's good for you, and even if you don't'—right—'we are going to take some time here.' And I do like the idea of doing it after dinner just because it's not—you're not so tired. Right. Right. Yeah. We didn't do that. I think that's a good idea. We would usually do it in bed. Yes. That's the other—that's the next bullet point. Right. Is before sleep, in bed together, taking 15, 20, 30 minutes just talking about the day and about who you ran into, who you talk to, who you care about, all that kind of stuff. The sweet—things are—context for communication. Just look at the calendar. 'What are we doing this week?' Read something and pray together. A little plug for—if you're a younger couple, I think 'When Sinners Say I Do' by Dave Harvey is an excellent book to go through, just to ground yourself in the gospel and applying the gospel in your marriage. For seasoned couples, he's got a book called 'I Still Do,' which is an excellent, real seasoned, mature book on marriages that are 10, 15 years and going. So I'd recommend those two books if you're, you know, looking for something to read together. Date nights are a great opportunity to get together and talk and obviously have, you know, an hour, two, three, just context for communication. And then throughout the day, as needed, guys, like, don't be afraid to like take five minutes or two minutes to just text your wife, 'Be like, is everything okay? Everything going well?' I think that really can cause a good sense of care within your wives. Yeah. I—we—we are big advocates of the book 'Getting Things Done.' You probably read that. I haven't read that. You've never read 'The Art of Execution' or whatever? It's David Allen, I think. And it's called GTD, 'Getting Things Done.' Yeah. Anyway, so we—one thing I thought was helpful early on was we actually read a—you don't have to use that book. You might have better ideas. But we read a productivity book together that—that sort of, in a sense, creates a home system, like a vocabulary for tracking and like staying on top of things. So we kind of created some kind of like a common culture for productivity. Yeah. It's like, 'This is how we are. This is how we do things.' And of course we're different people and do it a little differently. But anyway, we did that early on—first year, maybe. And to this day I can just tell when my wife has too much in her head and there's just—there's just—not like—she's just swimming in things like obligations. And that—the brain doesn't do a great job of sorting through priorities. So it could be like you need batteries for the smoke alarm, and you need—you know, you—something very, very, very important also. And your brain's just like holding all this stuff. Right. So one of the things I do with my wife, whenever it just seems like it's time, is we'll go somewhere and I'll just bring like a laptop and a bunch of—a legal pad. And I'm just like, 'Start.' And it goes real slow. Like, yeah, sure, yeah. You know, 'Probably as much as you can,' you know. 'When you write all this stuff down, start putting it on your calendar. Like, yeah, start getting a bunch of it done even then.' Yeah. So we'll spend two, three hours just kind of bleeding her brain out and getting—'Okay, this is all that you've been holding on to.' Right. Right. And what that winds up doing is—is it winds up—you realize that a lot of things you've been concerned about, you can just knock out that moment. Right. Anyway, so 'Getting Things Done,' I would like you to read that actually, because I'd like you to see if you think it's a good one or not. I'm sure it is. But it's a real system. That one is a real—it's almost like a diet book. Like, it's almost like, 'This is how you do productivity.' Got it. For us, it was—we needed that kind of thing. But yeah, I think giving each other—setting aside bigger chunks of time to just sort of turn the other person into almost a stenographer and say, 'I will listen. You start talking, and let's just figure out what's going on in your mind.' Yeah. And so forth. And isn't that just a practical way of counting each other's burdens? Yeah. Yeah. Just get everything out and let's figure out how to get it done. Yep. Absolutely. So great.

21 · Application on acts of kindness and service

All right. So that's creating context for communication. Second way to tend to our marriages practically and care for our wives is through acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, and service. So main idea there is just show kindness, thoughtfulness, and service towards your wife. Do things that demonstrate practically that you care about her, that she's special to you, that you love her, that she's number one in your life. So I think date nights are such a—have been such a blessing to me and Christine. Big ones, little ones. So, you know, like Valentine's Day is coming up—that's kind of a big one. But little ones, just like, 'Let's go out. Let's get some tea or some coffee or whatever. Let's just sit and talk.' Some mango chicken wraps. Mango chicken wrap. Yes. Let's go back to Isaac Newton's. They don't have to be expensive. Right. You can go for a walk in the park, yeah, in the springtime. That's great. Right now it's just—you go to—you would die if you did that right now. But yeah, yeah, we can't do that right now. But they can be big, it can be little. I've already talked about other acts and thoughtfulness, service, and midday checking—'How you doing?'—to your wife. If you can break out, you know, from work for them for five minutes, guys, there's this really interesting little trick you can do. You can create a shortcut on your iPhone, or you can just put a calendar date. By the way, share a calendar with your wife. Yes. Can you talk about that in a minute? Sure. Okay. But anyway, so there's this thing I do where I set these little shortcuts on my iPhone, and they just—they just notify me, yeah, a couple times in the day: 'Check in.' Yeah. And then I may or may not have actually programmed them to send automated messages periodically. But may or may not have happened. But the big thing is just like you thought of her. Yeah. Yeah. And it just—even when it comes up on my phone, I don't always check in, you know. I—right. It's not every day. But I do use it as a way of remembering. And, you know, I think for us, again, I want to give everything I can away that's helpful. Something like two o'clock, you know, you're going to see them in three hours, let's say. Right. Right. Right. Something like that. You get the fires warming up a little bit, you know, a little bit in advance. You know, 'Catch what you're saying?' Yeah. Yeah. So maybe a nice 2 p.m. And, you know, two is kind of a draggy kind of time. Yeah. To pick me up. Yeah. Get excited the night. The calendar thing. Yeah. I just am surprised by the number of people who don't do this. Share a calendar. Yeah. So if you have an iPhone, I don't know—I don't know Android, but iPhone, it's super easy. Well, we share our—we actually use Google Calendar, but we share it on iPhone. Okay. But yeah, I don't—I don't know how many of you do this. I remember as a 20-year-old thinking it must be a terrible life to have everything in your life scheduled out. You were probably looking forward to having a day of everything scheduled out. I remember thinking, like, 'There's no way I can be me if I have a calendar.' And so I quickly realized, like, 'That's not going to be helpful to people or to the Lord' or so forth. But yeah, we have a shared calendar. I feel like most people probably know to do this, but I just want to double check and make sure everybody—yeah. You should definitely have a shared calendar. Yeah. And just a plug for Sunday night, going over the next two weeks together or so, to make sure you're on the same page for 'What are we doing on Wednesday this week or Thursday this week?' Yeah. Yeah. We do that too. Yeah. It's a good practice. Yeah. All right. Note cards, letters. Like, I'm a pretty simple guy. I get Post-it notes. I get these super sticky Post-it notes, and I'll write a quick 'I love you,' nice, and put it above her bed or whatever. That's a nice little thing to do. Just show the practice we care. Gifts. Again, little is great. Like, get what's her favorite candy. Like, what's—get her a coffee, get her a snack, get her—get her—get her a flower from Costco or whatever. When you start doing this stuff, always be righteous in how she responds. Like, sometimes she'll—she'll be—like, evidently grateful. But sometimes she's—she's a dork too, you know. Like, sometimes she won't. And so what you'll see is guys get all bent out of shape. They'll do this thing, right, and expect immediate, you know, feedback. Right. No. Just keep doing this. Be faithful. Tend the garden. Yeah. Just keep doing this stuff. And it doesn't have to be—my wife's taste has changed actually a lot over the years. Things that she wouldn't have really appreciated in the past, she does now. And not gluten-free cookies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

22 · Application on physical affection

All right. So last category. So we've talked about communication. We talked about acts of kindness, service, thoughtfulness. And physical affection. Main idea there: just being a physical affection helps reinforce and celebrate the unity of your marriage. Also communicates love and care for your wife. Show your wife physical affection in big and small ways. She will appreciate it. Yep. Yep. So just always be touching. Yeah. A BT. Yeah. So Christine—she appreciates big hugs. So sometimes I just—my daughter—she—you can all make fun of me for this—she goes, like, 'Huggy kissy, huggy kissy.' Yeah. Sometimes I just look at Christine, I'm like, 'Huggy kissy.' Yeah. Like, 'You want to hug right now?' And sometimes she just really appreciates that. Yeah. I'm a big hug guy too. I—and I think that at some point I realized, you know, you're not going to have this person to hug forever, you know. And, you know, just being—understanding that. And understanding like, 'Well, gosh, like, there's going to be a day when I wish this hug was—I wish I had taken twice as long with this hug than I did.' So that's good. Yeah. Longer hugs are better. Yeah. And then for—talking about physical intimacy, like real romantic physical intimacy—the 'Sex, Romance and the Glory of God,' CJ does a nice job talking about that. I'm sure there's other books, you know, like 'Intended for Pleasure' and things like that which talk about sex and—yeah, 'Intended for Pleasure' is kind of our recommended book. But yeah. But CJ—CJ's big push is 'Touch your wife's heart and mind before you touch her body.' So that's what all these practicals are aiming towards. But yeah. Yeah. That's what he said. Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. So I just touch it all—all the time. There you go.

23 · Dov and Chris conclude with a vision for generational impact

All right. So to wrap things up, let's think generationally for a second. There's this quote—it's from CJ: 'What we do today can influence many people, many generations, and many tomorrows.' We've already talked about it. Like, we want to have marriages that our kids can look at—that are look at, yeah—and say, 'Well, like, my parents had a great marriage.' Yep. And they—that made me as a kid—that made me feel safe and secure, and I just felt good about it. My parents loved each other. And so, yeah, there really are very few world-changing things average people like us can do that are more significant and more pound-for-pound impactful than just having, like you said, a historically great marriage. It winds up being the tree that shades a lot of things and people and blesses a lot of things and people. It winds up being a big deal. Yeah. That's awesome. So yeah. So that's what we want in Providence. We want historically great marriages. What—marriages in which our wives are growing, our kids feel secure in that, that bring us joy. And one point I really want to hammer home is that we're not stuck in the patterns of the past. So if you're in a current practice in a marriage that is just lagging in some of this stuff, is not as strong as some of the stuff, Jesus died to forgive you and to free you so that you could repent and you could grow in your marriage and in caring for your wife. And then also, we're not stuck in the patterns of—like, maybe we had parents that did have historically great marriages, and we look at them, we're like, 'Wow, like, thank God for my parents' marriage.' But if they didn't, we, through our sanctified imagination, we can imagine what our marriage can look like now. Yes. And we can think, 'I want that kind of marriage, and I can—by God's grace, I'm going to build that kind of marriage with the help of the Holy Spirit—that I'm going to pass on to my kids and to future generations who to look at and say, "Wow, like, my parents had a great marriage."' We're not stuck in what—where we are today or where our parents were or anything like that. Absolutely. You know, we've—you and I have talked over the years about like just different distinctives for Providence. And one of the ones we've done is that we were just—we talked about—we're unashamedly focused on families. Yeah. Yeah. And of all that that means. And a lot of it does have, you know, parenting implications. But fundamentally, your phrase—historically great marriage—that's probably the number one thing we as a church can do to bless the kingdom of God is—I don't know, number one, probably not. Right. Right. Right. But I mean, it's a huge piece—is to help people have historically great marriages. But again, I'm telling you, don't come to me and say 'My marriage isn't great' if you don't have a great mission for your marriage. Like, I would just—I will tell you immediately: you come back to me when you know what you're supposed to do with your marriage. Because, well, what's going to happen is you're hearing all this stuff, and if you're not thinking mission, you're thinking 'me.' Then, you know, all of your spouse's weaknesses are going to feel personal and so on and so forth. You get that mission right and say, 'We know what we're here for. I know there are families in our church'—I don't think I should mention them, but that have really turned corners in their whole lives by just saying, 'You know what? We're just going to go all in and serve the church. And that's just it. That's just all we're going to be about. We're just going to serve.' And it changed their marriage. It changed—you know, not that it was bad before, but it—it did something to their whole life. Right. Right. So again, yeah, make sure you got this mission clear as you work on your marriage. Yeah. It's great.

24 · The conclusion grounds everything in the gospel

All right. And just to make the connection always to the gospel, you know, because of Jesus we are forgiven for our sin. We're kind of—we're righteous in Christ. We're indwelt with the Holy Spirit. It's because of Him we can choose to cultivate our marriage for the glory of God, the good of our wife and our family, and our own joy. And we do this, again, not to be kind of righteous in Christ, because we are kind of righteous in Christ. Because we are receiving God's care for us in Christ. And it's just—it's just a glorious thing to build a great marriage. Yes. And amen. Yes. And amen. Well, thank you, Dov. Thank you, Chris. Hey, we're still recording. That's good. All right. We made it. All right. Well, we're gonna come back at some point. I'm headed to the Philippines in a couple weeks. I guess I have one I want to do with you on self-control. So we'll—we'll maybe do that next time. Sounds good. All right. Thank y'all. Bye. Bye. Bye.