• Referenced scripture:
  • Psalm 121
  • Matthew 6:25-34

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: So unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you probably feel a little bit of tension and uncertainty given everything that’s happening around the world. All right?

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: Inflation comes to mind. Gas prices… holy cow! We filled up the car yesterday and it was well over $100. I think we’re paying well over $6 a gallon. We’re in Washington state, by the way. So go Washington state! [both laughs] We love our state, but they don’t… Anyway. [Selena laughs]

Other price hikes… So there’s other things like inflation. We went and got eggs the other day, and we’ll talk about that later, but man, were those expensive? The market is just going bonkers with all the different-

Selena: The increase in interest rates.

Ryan: Yeah, interest rates increases and stuff. Of course, what comes to mind is this dreaded R word, right? Recession. And even if you want to go a little bit further, depression. Economic recession, economic depression.

So what reactions are these ideas causing you, viewer, listener? What does that do to us? And if you’re anything like us, you might get that tinge of anxiety, the uncertainty: what’s gonna happen? Is the day going to come when this affects us in such a way that we can no longer provide for our children? And there’s added complexities to being business owners and things like that, and uncertainty that that creates.

So I want to share this quote with you and then we’ll get into the rest of the episode. But it goes, “When you live to please yourself, circumstances that God designs to teach you to trust and obey Him instead become temptations for you to fear and to worry.” That’s by a missionary named John Brogers.

So what is our response? So you can be in a situation and believe that God is good, and He’s sovereign. And we have to believe that there’s something in this that will produce in us His glory. So that’s exactly what we’re gonna talk about today: three real ways to deal with financial uncertainty in your life. And we hope it’s helpful to you. We’ll see you on the other side.

[00:02:02]

Selena: Well, this talk comes directly from the Frederick household [both chuckles] because we have definitely been feeling some of the crunch on the finances, the family budget, all of those things. God is good and faithful. We are so grateful for everything that He’s given us. We’re still just trying to learn to steward that for His glory.

But yeah, definitely tightening the belt in more ways than one. And it’s good. And we’re just believing that the Lord, again, is sovereign and that we can trust Him. And we’ll get into some of the ways that we’re learning to trust Him and how to deal with kind of this financial uncertainty that we’re facing and how that does put an added weight onto marriages.

I mean, before any of this, you know, what were the top five things that stressed marriages? I mean, finances are right up there. So just having the cultural temperature being what it is is just an added, I think, burden to our hearts. And can be.

Ryan: So if you’re not aware of who we are, my name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife Selena. Welcome. Thank you for watching, for listening. Our goal with this is to point you to Christ. And oftentimes we have done that even from the beginning, the inception of The Fierce Marriage ministry/blog, that’s all it started out as. And now here it is, whatever it is today. It’s always been us just kind of traveling with you.

Like we don’t have all the answers yet. We’ve been married going on 19 years this year. And so we do have some experience. We will share our successes with you, but also our struggles and our failures. So this is one of those areas where we just want to be… Like when we sat down to just think, “Okay, how can we minister to couples this week?”

And we thought, “What is the thing that’s really weighing on our hearts? How can we be kind of broken vessels in that regard and to share honestly with you? So our hope here is just to share openly with you and process with you. And in that, point you to Christ.

By the way, if you missed the last two episodes, go back and check those out. Selena is wearing a shirt here. It says “Woman by design.” This is something that we created to help and I guess give women a tool to just proclaim God’s truth and… I don’t know. We believe a winsome and even a beautiful way to say-

Selena: Yeah, a loving way.

Ryan: I’m not a woman, you’re a woman.

Selena: You’re not a woman. [Ryan laughs]

Ryan: That’s the whole point of the shirt.

Selena: That’s the whole point of the shirt.

Ryan: And you can declare that and step into those roles that are afforded to women specifically-

Selena: Without fear and with boldness.

Ryan: Without fear and with boldness-

Selena: With humility

Ryan: …given the cultural climate that we’re in. So for today’s discussion, three ways, three real ways to deal with financial uncertainty. And I will say this. We’ve been through a lot of financial uncertainty in our lives.

The present situation has a tone of that in our tightening the belt, like you mentioned. But there’s been times when we’ve had, you know, rent due, car payment due, and like 50 bucks in the bank. I used to do web development and so I’d be like waiting holding out for [00:05:00] checks to come in the mail for work that I had done. And the Lord was always faithful to see that those checks made it just in time, in many unlikely circumstances. And early on in our marriage we struggled. I was a janitor. You worked as a barista.

Selena: Oh yes.

Ryan: And we were in college full time, working full time. I remember going home just exhausted and you know, making the janitors wait. I worked in our apartment building.

Selena: We used to live in a really nice apartment.

Ryan: It was a mid-rise apartment building, and I was the hired help. [Selena chuckles] So I’d show up oftentimes, you know, late, and then I’d have night class. You’d have class. And it was just like we get like one or two, maybe moments together, it felt like every day. And just wondering like, “Hey, can we even eke out a living as a young married couple?”

So I think these conversations are important because so many times in those stressful moments we want to bootstrap our way out of it.

Selena: Well, like anything. Yeah, for sure.

Ryan: Yeah. Specifically financially. As a husband too. Because I feel like even this morning, I was like, “I will always have the burden of caring for our family and providing for our family.” You can never make me not feel that way.

Selena: Which is good because I think that’s the way… I don’t know. I think that’s the role God’s given you, right?

Ryan: Absolutely. And then the next piece I said to you was, “I trust God to ultimately help me do that in ways that are honoring to Him.” But that doesn’t mean I don’t have to go do the work.

Selena: I mean, if you look at like when you first get married, maybe you’re given a lot of gifts, financial gifts, and you’re kind of headed into marriage, and there’s not a whole… Maybe there’s some debt and stuff, but it doesn’t matter where the market is, it’s really a matter of where our hearts are and what our attitudes are towards money, towards finances, who we truly believe they belong to in the first place.

So whether we are headed towards a recession or we have no inflation, we still have to have a right heart orientation towards what God has given us.

Ryan: Right. And not having that will, I guess, lead us to places of anxiety and getting the cold sweats and-

Selena: Not being able to sleep at night.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So we really have to calibrate our hearts. And it takes a conscious effort because we are not naturally inclined to trust God in these ways. I think our sin nature wants to pull us away from being sustained by Him and wanting to sustain ourselves.

I mean, we’ve kind of covered the… If you’re living in the west, you know what we’re talking about. Inflation is real, interest rates are going up.

Selena: Higher than it’s ever been.

Ryan: You went to the store to get eggs and eggs were just up like 25%. And we eat a lot of eggs. We go through a lot eggs. We do have chickens-

Selena: They’re starting to lay. We get about two a day. So- [laughs]

Ryan: Our family eats about six or eight a day.

Selena: We’re getting there. We’re getting there.

Ryan: We have more chickens so we’ll have more on the way. But they’re tiny little eggs. We’re hoping they’ll get bigger. It’s important to remember that even those types of things and in those situations-

Selena: We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to fear.

Ryan: Right. Because it is shocking. It’s happening very rapidly.

Selena: Yeah, there’s some little sticker shock.

Ryan: So where our foundation lies is going to determine how we respond to that. And I’ll propose to you and we’ll propose to you two kind of contrasting views of money and things and I guess just provision. One is scriptural and one isn’t but both are equally weighted in the church and prevalent in the church. And we want to point you to the scriptural one.

So stewardship versus ownership mentalities. You heard us talk about stewardship in the past. If you haven’t, go back. We’ve done, I think, an interview with Scott Rodin. It was really good. He’s like the stewardship, I’ll say, guru.

But stewardship basically says this: that everything is God’s and what we have has been entrusted into our care for a time. And at the end of the time our stewardship ends, it goes back to Him or someone else will steward it. But the point is, is not ours. It’s not ours to glom on to, to own. It’s ours to use for the glory of God and by His grace, for our own good as well.

That’s in contrast to the ownership mentality, which says that basically God has His own kingdom over here. Scott Rodin call this two-kingdom living. God has His kingdom over here. And that’s great. Like, I’m all about God’s kingdom. He’s building His kingdom, He’s doing His good work.

But also there’s Ryan’s and Selena’s kingdom, which is like we want to build our own kind of life, we want to build our own monoliths, if you will, whether that’s some sort of quote-unquote, “financial legacy.” We want to build up retirement wealth, we want to build up real estate wealth. We want to do whatever that monolith looks like.

And God can have His kingdom. I’ll give to God’s kingdom. I’ll give 10% because that’s what everybody thinks you’re supposed to give. There’s a lot to be said biblically on that. Basically, we’re supposed to give sacrificially and gladly more than 10% or less, but however, the Lord leads you. [00:10:00] That’s the New Testament model for giving.

Selena: My only bristle with all that you’re saying is that I don’t know those are bad things, right? You don’t want to leave your children with lots of debt. As a parent, you don’t want to not… You want to help prepare your children. I mean, that’s just kind of a think a desire of any parent’s heart.

But to do that on your own, by your own accord, and with, you know, maybe only going to God when you need that financial help is definitely some indicators of wrong heart orientation. And the Holy Spirit needs to be doing some work there. So that’s just my only, I think-

Ryan: Okay, well, I would never say that… We’re called to live on wisely.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So being wise means that you’re not piling up debt for your kids, you’re not doing all those things without warning.

Selena: But having real estate is not a bad thing, right?

Ryan: No.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: As long as we see it as God’s and He’s entrusted it into our care.

Selena: Right. I just want to be clear about that. [chuckles]

Ryan: So that’s where like for the life of a steward, things can come and go into your life and it doesn’t change your sense of security because it’s all God’s anyway, including you. Whereas if God is building His kingdom and I have my own, if my kingdom starts to diminish and I realize that my security is there, then I don’t actually care that much about God’s kingdom. I’m gonna instead just focus on my kingdom because my kingdom is crumbling on this view.

Selena: Or you only care about His kingdom as it pertains to your kingdom.

Ryan: Right, right. So the biblical model for financial everything is stewardship. We view money as something that God owns, we view everything, our life, every breath is owned and governed by God. And we are called to use every ounce of it, every iota be wrung out for the glory of God.

That is the foundational premise. Stewardship, not the two Kingdom… I want to be very clear. Not the two kingdom side. But we are actually building God’s kingdom. It’s all His anyway.

Selena: Yeah, with the pieces that He’s entrusted us.

Ryan: Yeah. And He’s given us this little… You know, maybe He’s building it and it’s comprised of millions of bricks. He’s given us these few bricks, and these are the bricks that are His. And we’re using these to build His kingdom. He’s entrusted us to be the masons over that portion of it. Now, predicated on that, what are the three kind of-

Selena: Three real ways.

Ryan: I guess three real ways, yeah.

Selena: And you said something that these all have to kind of work together. So as we go through them, I think at the end you should mention or just talk about how if you do one but not the other, then they fall apart. Or if you ignore two of them and… Anyways, that’s saying the same thing.

So first thing is to identify and recognize the problem. So looking around, the prices of everything are going up. Most likely your salary or your pay is not going up. And so we’re going into a season of needing to tighten the belt. So we need to as people say, we can’t ignore this, right? We can’t act like it’s not happening. You can’t run away from it. So don’t try. [chuckles]

And you may be able to prepare for it but we’ve had these conversations, and we can have them another time, but how much can you actually prepare for something like this?

Ryan: I’m gonna interject because when we say, “identify it, recognize it,” I think most anyone’s gonna say, “Yeah, this is happening.” But I think the key is identifying it and recognizing it in your life and saying, “This is impacting us in this way.” Not just “Yeah, inflation is a thing.”

Selena: Right. How is it impacting your life?

Ryan: We want to give you permission to say things like, “We can’t afford that right now.”

Selena: Yes. You should absolutely be able to say that without shame or condemnation or anything.

Ryan: Nothing wrong with it.

Selena: There’s nothing wrong with saying that.

Ryan: And there are ways to say that are faith-filled and there are ways to say that are stewardship language. [Selena chuckles] And there are ways to say, “I wish that would be fun. I’d be really fun to go to that movie with you but life’s just hard right now.”

Selena: “We just can’t afford it. Which could be a real truth.”

Ryan: So there is an attitude there. This goes both ways by the way. Because you have people that are on the prosperity side of the spectrum and they think God is this name it and claim it. “God, I just need to have more faith to have more stuff.”

And then there’s the people on the [inaudible] side of the spectrum is like, “All things are bad and everything material is evil and therefore I should just live in abject poverty.” I don’t see scriptural basis for either of those. There’s something in the middle, which is often where scripture will fall, that says that we can still work hard and strive to make a life that is flourishing and fruitful in many ways but not holding God hostage and saying, you know-

Okay, identify it, recognize it. It’s okay to calibrate correctly around this. Do you want to share the syrup thing? [laughs]

Selena: So the second point was, like you’re saying, calibrate. But discern and define kind of need and priorities in your marriage, in your household. Well, he brought up maple syrup when we were discussing this because I fork out for yummy maple syrup by Costco. And that’s the only one I could find lately. So-

Ryan: I don’t ever eat the maple syrup. The girls have pancakes [00:15:00] I never have pancakes.

Selena: He’s just like getting the cheap stuff like, “It doesn’t matter.”

Selena: And I’m like, “Well, it’s this special dessert type thing that you can just have a little and enjoy it. And it goes a long ways.” And he’s just like, “But it feels like the same thing.”

Ryan: And literally 10 times the cost. [both laughs]

Selena: It is not literally 10 times the cost.

Ryan: You get one little thing for how much? $18, isn’t it? It’s $100? [both laughs]

Selena: Again, discerning the-

Ryan: It might as well be.

Selena: It might as well be.

Ryan: Okay. And the cheap stuff you get like two gallons for like three bucks.

Selena: Death has comes cheap, I guess. [laughs]

Ryan: And yes, our girls are definitely not ever eating processed food or sugar ever. So the kids don’t know the difference. That’s my argument is they don’t really know the difference. And so it’s funny-

Selena: I know, but it’s because I taste the difference. But that’s just me being… I mean-

Ryan: It’s a funny example but like… So the first step is recognizing, Okay, it’s time to maybe tighten the belt a little bit. Now we’re discerning, Okay, where are the areas… This is very practical. This is the second way, by the way. Discern and define those needs and priorities so you can actually delineate where you can tighten the belt.

Selena: Right. How can we live wisely? I mean, kind of one of our rules for eating out is we don’t go eat out unless it’s something we’ve just really aren’t great at making. I mean, there is an occasion, like we went on a road trip. We went to family camp, and we had to eat on the road. And so, you know, we try to be economical about that.

But if we’re going to go out on a date, or go somewhere and spend money, it’s like, “Let’s go somewhere that… I can’t make this food very well. Like sushi or something. And even then it’s not like we go to high-class place, but get lots of sushi around these parts.

Ryan: Oh, yeah, we’re close to the sound. But also like we’ll share a meal.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: Because oftentimes the portions are such that you can split it and still have some leftover.

Selena: There’s just creative ways I think that you can cut back and recognize maybe we don’t need as much as we think we need.

Ryan: Here’s a really clear example that came up just recently as well. Typically, when we have our parents over or something, I try to go a little bit extra and give them a really nice meal. So I’ll go to a butcher… There’s a Mexican butcher nearby, this really good Carne asada, and so I’ll get from him. And it’s not cheap, but also it doesn’t break the bank.

They were coming over and I was gonna get Tri Tip. So I love to… on the Traeger… I do Suvi then I finish on the Traeger with a tri-tip. It turns out amazing. But it’s gone up. It used to be you get Tri Tip for like seven bucks a pound, and it was $12 a pound. And normally I’d get two of these and it’d be like 30 bucks. I mean, it was pushing 50, 60 bucks for these two things. And it varies by weight.

And so I was like, “Okay, money’s tight. I would love to bless them. However, that’s 50 bucks,” or “I could spend 12 bucks on like 30 of these drumstick chicken things.”

Selena: And that’s where you have to recognize like, We’re still blessing people with a meal.

Ryan: Right. And they loved it.

Selena: We’re blessing them with our time and our resources. I guess, again, we have to kind of rein in our own internal vocabulary of, okay, we’re still blessing them, we’re still showing hospitality, which is the one part that I would say like, if you can forego anything else, forego other things, but don’t forego being able to be hospitable to other people.

And find creative ways of what that might look like of making a little bit goes a long way. I think women are really good at this and really like taking a small amount of something and multiplying it. I think that’s one of the blessings God’s giving women. So find creative ways to do that.

Ryan: Gas is another one. We have a smaller car that is a lot tighter for our three daughters to fit into. It’s not as fun, I’ll say, it’s not as comfortable but it gets like twice as good.

Selena: It’s a Prius, people. It’s old Prius, and it still works

Ryan: It works really well. And it gets really good gas mileage as opposed to our other one, which is a gas guzzler. And so making the decision to say, Yeah, we only drive maybe, I don’t even know, 100 miles a week, we don’t drive that much. But the point is, is when we’re driving around, we can greatly reduce that cost.

So finding really practical ways and having that conversation seems like a very obvious step. But you’re watching this listening to this but many couples just don’t go to that step.

Selena: They just kind of exist in the attention.

Ryan: And then you fight when the grocery bill is 50% more than it was supposed to be, and the husband’s upset because the wife went… she’s like, “I’m just saying I just got the groceries we get.” There was no over-articulation to says, “Hey, this is a season of our lives. We’re figuring out what to do. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re trusting the Lord. One of the ways we’re trusting the Lord is we are going to look at these areas where we can tangibly make changes.” Which is actually the third step. Okay.

So the first tangible way, to recap, is we identify it, recognize it, give yourself permission to acknowledge that there’s a warrant for the anxiety, for the worry, for the uncertainty. The second one is now take action to discern and define the needs and priorities that can be cut. [00:20:00]

The third one, and this is the most, most important one, and this has to undergird everything, which we talked about a little bit on the stewardship side, we have to trust God in this. Psalm 121… I don’t actually have it up. Do you want to have your Bible and open that up? [Selena chuckles] We’re going to read the entire passage. Psalm 121. Let’s see how fast Selena is-

Selena: Look at that.

Ryan: Look at that.

Selena: It’s underlined too. [both laughs]

Ryan: You’re so spiritual. Read that whole thing. It’s only eight verses.

Selena: It’s titled “My Help Comes from the Lord. A Song of Ascents.” I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.”

Ryan: I love it. We don’t have time to unpack this whole Psalm but the scope of it is all-encompassing, right? He’s your keeper. He’s your shade on your right hand. The sun will not strike you by day, the moon will not strike you by night. Your coming in, your going out from this time forth and forevermore.

Selena: He does not slumber. He is a God who does not need to sleep and slumber like we do. He’s infinite as we are finite.

Ryan: While we’re sleeping, He’s still working, He’s still sovereign and He’s still good. The thing that got me about this verse was the opening parts. “I lift my eyes up to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord.” That sounds great.

But then there’s this reminder afterward: “Who made heaven and earth.” Another translation says, “The maker of heaven and earth.” It’s not just some god. This is the capital G God of the universe, Yahweh. And He has said, “I will care for my beloved.”

Now, does that always look like we expect it to look? No. Doesn’t always mean that he wants for us the exact same things we want for ourselves, meaning comfort, security, the ability not to have to cry out to God and trust Him? He wants our hearts more than anything. And He will use any avenue by which to get our hearts. And oftentimes He untangles our hands off the material things of life by making those things a little more scarce.

I’m not saying that’s what He’s doing now. It could be. But I’m just saying that perspective that when we trust Him, that’s on the table now. That He can be a good Father in ways that we may not like all the time. And that’s good.

And by reminding ourselves of that we can then trust Him even more wholeheartedly. And what did Jesus say? So that’s an Old Testament verse. That’s all very kind of easy to look at and be upbeat about. But what did Jesus say, especially in terms of the New Testament?

We’re gonna read Matthew 6, starting in verse 25. It says this, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ Or Ryan’s translation: what gas are we gonna put in our car. For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

All you get is today, friend. Time the great equalizer. No matter who you are, no matter how much money you have, you only get 24 hours in a day. You get the same 24 hours as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, as the poorest of the poor, people in India-

Selena: Well, he says, “Do not be anxious and do not worry about your clothing.” Not just in times of prosperity and good and fullness, right? But in times of lack. Just no matter what, we’re always trusting God. We’re not being anxious. Again, recognizing who the Creator is and who in whose hand we truly are held.

Ryan: Yeah. These can sound like platitudes and truisms. So let’s drive this home just a little bit further There was a quote that I came across. It was by a nearby pastor named John Searcy. He said this: “Anxiety is dressed rehearsing the unfaithful of God. Anxiety functionally [00:25:00] says something false about God: that He is unaware and attentive or unable to come to our aid.”

He says this as well. “Overcoming anxiety is more than just acknowledging that you don’t have control. It’s about cultivating a settled heart that no longer clings to control.” Man, boy, do I love to claim to control in this area of our lives? I need a settled heart. I don’t just need to think different thoughts, but I need a heart that settled on the deep reality that God is God and I am not. That is the right orientation of things.

Selena: What was the temptation in Genesis 3? For control, to be God, to be more than you [chuckles] thought you were. That was a temptation to just be in control.

Ryan: So it’s not just about acknowledging that we don’t have control, but cultivating a heart that no longer clings to the idea that I might be in control.

Selena: So good.

Ryan: And so this is only possible if our faith is in Christ. We’ve obviously referenced the Bible here If you’re new to the podcast or the YouTube channel, we are Christian. We follow Christ with our whole hearts. We believe that the Word of God is completely authoritative in our lives, that it plainly lays out what it means to know God and what it means to follow Him and everything from how to live morally, but how to be saved.

And we are not saved through living a right life. We are saved because Jesus did. And He gave His… He perpetuated—that’s a word—He gave us his righteousness, and then said that you are not just made right with the zero balance but no, we are credited now with His righteousness. And because of that we can stand in God’s good favor and in His good grace.

And so if you’re not a Christian, we want to invite you into that reality. Friend, God is real, Christ is real. Salvation is real if you’re in Christ. So go to this website if you want to learn more. It’s a simple website. It’s thenewsisgood.com. There’s some details there what it means to become a Christian. We would love to welcome you into the family of Christ. We hope to do so very quickly.

With that said, let’s pray. Want to pray, Selena or do you want me to pray?

Selena: Go ahead.

Ryan: Okay. Our Father, I thank you that you have proven time and time again that you are faithful, you are good, and you are loving. And in times when things feel uncertain, we can still trust that. You’re not just loving when things feel easy and secure and visibly good, but you’re loving and good even when all that security is gone, when uncertainty is on the horizon, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the world, with the economy, with our own paychecks from week to week, Lord. We can still trust you because you are a good Father.

I pray for the husbands and the wives that are struggling with anxiety, with uncertainty. I pray that you bolster their faith, Holy Spirit, fill them with faith that they might pray prayers that are filled with faith and trusting you. And no matter the outcome, that they can still trust and honor and glorify you. We love you, Lord.

We pray for the couples struggling in their marriage right now. Bring them closer. Bring people into their lives that might point them in the right path, down the right path. In Jesus name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right, friends, if you made it this far out of the episode, I want to mention, speaking of just our livelihood, our patrons have made this, frankly, you’ve made it possible for us to continue at this point. And that’s just because economically things are really funky right now but you are the bedrock of this ministry.

So if you want to be a part of that, we would be honored and blessed through that. We have some ways we want to bless you back. So to check that out, go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. That will lead you to a place where you can find out more of what it means to be a partner with this ministry. And I just can’t thank you enough. If you’re a patron, thank you, thank you, thank you. It’s blessed us, our family immensely. You’re allowing this work to continue in ways that you perhaps don’t even know.

So check that out: fiercemarriage.com/partner. Also, check out this new shirt. Go to a womanbydesign.us. That’ll redirect you to where you can pick up a sweatshirt or a shirt. There’s ones for girls too.

Selena: Yeah, girl by design so you can be a twinsies.

Ryan: Twinsies. Our girls love them by the way. They wear them all the time. So with that said, this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: We’ll see you again in about seven days. Until next time—

Selena: Stay fierce.