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your standard becomes now the foundation by which you keep the short accounts. It becomes the foundation by which you love each other with high regard, you know. And yes, I think the husband should lead that, for sure.

Selena: Right. I mean, you say this all the time as Christians, you know, who are centered on Christ, Sundays are non-negotiable. We meet with and we gather consistently with the body that we are a part of. We are in our scripture daily. We are teaching and training our children how to read scripture and understand it daily.

Ryan: So this is where… go back a week and listen to the gospel-centered marriage episode if you hadn’t. And I jumped in because this is where people will either bristle against this or they’ll say, okay, yeah. And they’ll bristle against it because they’ll think we’re saying you have to go to church in order to be a true Christian or to be saved. And you have to read your Bible. And they’ll say, you’re getting away from the gospel. The gospel means I’m saved by grace.

That’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying that because of the gospel, because of this reality, there’s these outworkings of it. And these outworkings aren’t just there arbitrarily. They’re not just there because God is a rule guy or because we’re adding rules and things. No, He’s given us His body because we’re not designed to live aside from the body. Like we can’t be detached from the body of Christ and expect to flourish any more than I can expect to cut off my left hand and expect it just to walk off the table and to not be rotten a week later.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Right. But we lop ourselves off from the body of Christ and we wonder why we’re rotting from the inside out. We need to be connected to the vine. We need to be connected to the body.

Selena: We’re protected by the shepherd.

Ryan: We’re protected by the shepherd.

Selena: He’s the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. So are we living out these disciplines because of what Christ has done for us, because of our devotion to Him? You know, attending church, reading our Bibles, praying together. We did a whole episode on prayer I think one or two episodes back. Go check that out.

And as a married couple, the biggest part of our marriage has been our spiritual growth through some of these spiritual disciplines and constantly talking about what God is doing in our hearts, how He’s leading us, what stuck out at the sermon on Sunday, what are we struggling with, how can we love each other better, and then are we modeling this and teaching these things to our children?

I mean, we started off as very spiritual at 16-year-olds, but asking what is the Lord doing in your heart? Like what are you learning? I think my favorite things about some of the conversations we had early on our marriage were, you know, what is God doing in your heart? What have you been learning in scriptures? That just becomes so normal for our conversation now. And if it’s not for you, like start. Start building that skill. There’s so much to talk about. Trust me.

Ryan: We talked about this in the prayer episode where there might be times too, where you’re just feeling depleted and weak and your faith is weak, and so you go to each other. And that’s what God is doing is that, God, I feel like my faith is weak. Lord, help me. And by the way, you’ve given me a wife to help me.

A quick, very tangible thing on how to keep the connection in the right place. We do check-ins. We don’t do them as much anymore. When we started the podcast, we used to do this on the podcast together, but we have the three kind of questions. What voice is in your ear-

Selena: Voice in your ear, what book is in your hand-

Ryan: And what is God doing in your heart? In other words, what’s convicting you right now? And I would even add to that, what sins are there that need to be confessed? That’s how you keep it clean folks. That’s how you keep that floor from getting cluttered. And you know what? You’re going to have a healthy, functional marriage. You’re going to have a more joy-filled marriage. It’s going to bring fruitfulness all around.

Selena: There is so much more joy to be had and so much sin to be avoided if we can just… I laugh at myself how many times I trip over toys in our home or cardboard or whatever. We’ve recently had cardboard because of many boxes and things from books and stuff and kids play with them. Anyways, the mess is there. I’m tripping over it and I’m getting frustrated and yet I still don’t pick up the mess, right? It’s like, well, I just have to do all these other things before I… No. If you just stop and deal with the mess that’s there, everything else is gonna come, I think easier and with a more joyful attitude.

Drift will set in between you two if we are not cleaning the home of our marriage, the sin will pile up, you’ll be cut off from one another. You will feel as if you’re cut off, maybe, hearts are going to be hardened. They say an idle mind, and I would say idle hands are the devil’s playground. Like if you’re not putting your hand to the till of cleaning your marriage home of repenting of your sins, they’re just going to pile up and at some point they might be irrecoverable in terms of there could be some serious breakage.

Ryan: But the beauty is, is that when you do put your hand to that cleaning, if you will, if you are kind to one another, like Ephesians says, you’re tenderhearted, you’re forgiving one another, not in any way, but you’re forgiving as God in Christ forgave you. And how did He forgive you? Freely.

Selena: As far as the East is from the West

Ryan: And threw your sin as far as the East is from the West, it’s removed from you. When you start doing that, that’s when your marriage begins to thrive again, begins to be fruitful once again.

In that vein, that’s the gospel, right? And we always end these episodes with a reminder of what that is. If you are a Christian, praise God. If you’re not a Christian, or you feel like maybe you haven’t quite yet grasped it, well I have good news for you. It’s not about your grasp on the gospel. It’s about God’s grasp on you. And He is here maybe prompting you to respond in faith to the good news that Christ died. He didn’t stay dead. He rose again. And if you place your faith in Him, you can be risen with Him in His life. You die with Him in his death, you die to your flesh, but then you’re risen to new life in the spirit. That’s the good news of the gospel. And it only comes by faith. And by the way, that faith is a gift of God who gives it.

And our prayer is that that faith would be enlivened through these episodes and through the reminders in scripture and through the Holy Spirit Himself. So if you don’t know Jesus, we recommend you find a friend who does. Text him, call him, say, “I want to talk about Jesus.” And then hopefully out of that, that would lead you to their church. You would go to their church, you’d be under the care of a shepherd — somebody who’s preaching the word. If you don’t have a friend or you can’t think of a church in your area, we have a church finder and we have a few other things available to you at this website. It’s thenewsisgood.com. That should help you point you in the right direction. Sound good?

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you for the gift of cleaning house. Lord, we don’t have to have a perfect house, a perfect marriage, Lord. We can’t. We’re still being sanctified. We still sin. Lord, but your forgiveness is never exhausted. And the type of forgiveness that you’ve given us means that we can forgive each other and our forgiveness for one another can never be exhausted, Lord, because it’s as you forgave us in Christ. Thank you, Father, for that gift.

Help these couples to clean house, help them identify the things that are piling up in the corner or behind the refrigerator, so to speak, or under the bed, those things that they’ve hidden away. Lord, I pray that they would, those things would be identified, that you would embolden them, that you’d fill these couples with faith to deal with those things and to ask for forgiveness, to bring them to one another, to bring them to you, that they might be cleansed of it.

Lord Jesus, thank you that your gospel is pure, that it saves us completely, that all of these things that we are striving for, they don’t make us saved. Jesus, you save us. So ultimately you are our hope, not our actions. Lord, help us to live out that hope in reality. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: Amen. All right. Once again, if you want to partner with us, we’d be honored. Either way, we will be here Lord willing week after week. But if you want to partner, you can go to this website, fiercemarriage.com/partner. That’ll take you to the Fierce Fellowship, a smorgasbord of delights awaits.

Selena: Cornucopias and smorgasbords, that’s all that awaits you.

Ryan: It awaits. All right. Well, this episode of the Fierce Marriage Podcast is—

Selena: In the can.

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

Selena: Stay fierce.