• Referenced scripture:
  • 1 Timothy 5:8
  • Genesis 3:17-19
  • 1 Peter 3:7

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: So this morning I’m talking to my dad. He’s 35-plus years being a counselor, psychologist, corporate psychologist. Grandma and grandpa came over to take the girls so that we could record for our lovely podcast listeners or viewers.

And he goes, “What are you guys talking about today?” And I said, “We’re talking about there’s this wife whose husband hates his job and wants to find another job and they can’t seem to find any peace or agreement around this discussion. And he goes, “Ryan, that is a phenomenal idea.” [both laughs] So I’m happy to say we’re gonna talk about that today. We’ll see you on the other side.

[00:00:35]

Selena: We’re gonna read this but they’re a young married couple… We need to set the stage I think for this.

Ryan: Well, that was the hook.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: I was just trying to be very hooky.

Selena: He was very hooky. I was also like, “Well, there’s some things we got to say here.”

Ryan: You were like, “This is good.” My dad was hooked.

Selena: Your dad was hooked, yes.

Ryan: Again, psychologist.

Selena: And he had opinions too, as well as I did. So I’m going to try to be nice in this episode. [both laughs]

Ryan: Before Selena lets her spiciness show-

Selena: Not about your dad. It’s about what was written to us.

Ryan: I often wish that we could just have our pre-talk talks recorded because to me sometimes they’re better.

Selena: No. Not this one for me. [laughs] This one was-

Ryan: That’s why they’re better because they’re so unpolished. [both laughs]

Selena: I needed to team back. Team back.

Ryan: So if you don’t know who we are, my name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife Selena. We are the faces, voices, founders of all things fierce in our little corner of the internet. Thank you for giving us your time and attention. We exist to help couples become couples that are created for the glory of Christ. And we believe that all marriages are ultimately created for Christ’s glory. But we need a lot of help in how to live and align ourselves with what that actually means biblically.

We are Christian. We align our lives and marriage, including parenting, which is the other side, we align all of that with what the Bible says. Not just what Ryan and Selena say or what fancy books say. What the fanciest book of all says—the Bible. So thank you for joining us.

Let’s jump into this topic, Selena. I’m just gonna ask you, why did you need to pull it back? I’m asking you genuinely because-

Selena: Well, should we read what they wrote?

Ryan: Okay, sure.

Selena: Then it might help other people understand why I might be a little more…

Ryan: It’s your good friend Anon has written in this week.

Selena: He’s been very persistent, this Anon. [both laughs] Anonymous, in case anybody need to know that. [laughs] “We are a young married couple, 23 years old. My husband currently does not like the job he does but he doesn’t know what he wants to do. Anytime we talk about his job or what he wants to do he says, I’m being “rude,’ quote-unquote, when in reality I’m just trying to be realistic, that he can’t quit the job he has without having something else lined up or not even know what he wants to do. How can I support him in his decisions, but still be realistic with him? It always turns into an argument. We’re so young, we want to buy a house and have kids soon and I just want to be prepared for the future.”

So lots of questions happening. Also, they’re young. We’re in our 40s now almost.

Ryan: Hey, hey, just slow your roll, Frederick.

Selena: I just turned 40. He’s gonna be 40 in like few months, like two months. He’s practically-

Ryan: I’m a man in my 30-

Selena: Late 30s-

Ryan: …dating a woman in her 40s. [both laughs] And I can tell you, age has done you well, wife.

Selena: Thank you. So young couple that’s married. They’re probably about 23 years old. The husband is in a job he doesn’t like. I think many of us have been there. There’s some particularly things that we have to draw out from this without knowing. He is the husband and as believers and followers of Christ, we believe that the husband is supposed to be the main provider for the family. So, you know, she’s asking, “Do you have something else lined up?” And he’s like, “Don’t be rude.” [laughs]

Ryan: That’s what it seems like.

Selena: I mean, she even says, like, “How can I support him in his decisions?” To me, that was something key. His decisions. Well, his decisions about a job are not just his decisions alone. You are one now and so there’s some unity that needs to be discussed. So yeah, how can she be supportive? How can she approach this type of conversation?

I think this can go either way, but I mean, in particular, with a husband, that was kind of my rub because we’ve just experienced a lot of husbands that have kind of… they don’t like what they’re doing, but they don’t know what they want to do, as if your destiny is out there somewhere unattainable.

So they’re just kind of like… It’s like they’re… And I’m not saying this person is, but they just kind of usurp and they just give up and they just like, “I don’t want to do this so I’m just not going to. [00:05:00] Don’t talk to me, wife, about this,” or “You don’t understand.”

It feels like there’s just always these walls. It just feels really selfish if I’m gonna be honest. It feels really selfish. And that’s what your dad said, actually. [both chuckles] That oftentimes younger,-

Ryan: It appears that way.

Selena: …married couples have a lot of selfishness to deal with.

Ryan: Always.

Selena: Not that we’re out of the woods because we very much have selfish issues that we need to deal with.

Ryan: You do. Yeah, you do. [both chuckles] We have to make some of these assumptions as we’re approaching this question. Of course, if we were able to sit down with this couple or spend any time of life living alongside them, then we could say more authoritatively… with more authority will say, like, “You guys are dealing with these specific issues.”

So I think we have to kind of tackle this question generally. To do that, I just kind of want to walk through some of the underlying premises that are kind of embedded within this question. And as we go, I’m hoping that we’ll uncover some of the big biblical truths and how they bear their weight on the various underlying premises.

In other words, when something is assumed to be true, then we need to question, is that thing actually true? That’s a premise. Or is it a false premise? So as we go through this, we’re going to do that kind of line by line.

I think there is… Let’s see. How many do I have of these? I think there’s like five or six premises to go through here.

Selena: You didn’t number them.

Ryan: I didn’t number them. I gotta use numbered lists, not bulleted lists. The first underlying premise is, and Selena touched on it, is that it’s good and right for man to work and to provide for his family.

Selena: I just want to say too, and this might rub people the wrong way, but if you’re married, then you’ve already committed to working and to providing for your family. If you can’t do that, then maybe you should slow down the low on getting married, if you’re not ready to be providing and stepping into that role as a man. Am I right?

Ryan: Yes, I think-

Selena: Not that you’re gonna know exactly what you’re going to do the rest of your life, but you need to be ready to put your hand to the plow, whatever that is, that the Lord is putting in your hand.

Ryan: Generally speaking, yes. As a young man, that’s one of the pieces of the puzzle, the costs you have to count before you ask this woman to marry you. And that’s not what he’s providing.

Selena: He just doesn’t like where [inaudible]

Ryan: He doesn’t like his job. And we’ll talk about like, Okay, should we like our job? We’re gonna talk about that later. The first piece I want to establish, that it is good and right for a husband to work and provide for his family.

1 Timothy 5:8 says this, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” So, yeah, there’s a pretty strong biblical imperative here for men specifically to… they’re ultimately the head and the responsible party when it comes to provision for not just the wife, but for the entire household. But we’re talking about the husband-wife dynamic here.

There’s also one more premise that I didn’t put in the list, but it’s this idea that you need to buy a house to start a family. But we can hold that off. Do you have any thoughts on that? I mean-

Selena: I don’t know. I think it is good and right for a man to provide for family. Absolutely. I’m 100% behind that. When we got married, we both had careers… or jobs. I would say jobs. We were still in college. So we both had jobs. We were working. We are working to provide for our daily life and to be able to just live and exist and be independent and autonomous from our parents.

Ryan: I remember when we got engaged, I worked as a janitor. No, no, I was working as a landscaper at a church, a fairly big enough church to have a kid working as a landscaper and as a miscellaneous maintenance guy. I also worked as a dishwasher because I wasn’t making enough to provide for my wife… or my fiancé. I ended up being a janitor for two years. That was important to us. We also didn’t want to take on a bunch of extra debt. So we decided to buckle down and work hard for a few years.

Selena: Guys, there’s no shame in having a job that pays the bills, right? There’s no shame in that. And I know we’re gonna talk about enjoying it versus-

Ryan: There’s only shame to be had in laziness, and we’ll talk about that little bit later. So that’s the first premise. It’s good and right for a man to work. Second premise. I want to ask you about this. It’s good and right for a woman, for a wife to want to be provided for?

Selena: Yeah. I think it’s a good expectation for a wife to depend on her husband to provide for their family. And I’m not saying depend on… I don’t depend on Ryan to pay all my credit card bills and just do, you know, I can just spend, spend, spend and do whatever we want.

I don’t depend on him to satisfy all my pleasures and everything that every women… whatever I want. I depend on him to provide food and shelter for our family. I depend on him to [00:10:00] make sure that we have gas in the car and that we have a car that runs. You know, things that I know and expect him to be able to do. Can I do those things as well? Sure. I mean, here we are.

Ryan: So husband should not be looking at this thing like, “Hey, you want your own money to spend, you get your own job. You got to pay your half.” We’ve talked about this in the past-

Selena: This is our roommate contractual-

Ryan: We’re not roommates. We’re one. And as a husband, I’ve taken responsibility for you in a unique way.

Selena: In various ways. Yeah.

Ryan: So yeah, it’s good and right for a wife to want that. Now, here’s the third premise. Maybe we should jump to the… We’ll just stay in order I have them here, even though they’re not numbered.

So the third premise is this a man’s job should be enjoyable. And if it’s not, he should seek other employment. Now we’re talking about marriage but we’re talking about how a couple processes through a job that is not ideal.

Now, when you say you don’t like your job, there’s all kinds of conversations to be had about why do you not like your job. Is your job causing you to sin? I mean, that’s a legitimate question. If that’s the case, then absolutely get out of your job, trust the Lord to provide for you. God’s not going to want you to stay somewhere that’s causing you to sin.

I’m thinking of… I don’t know what situation where that could be the case. I can’t think of any off the top of my head. You can imagine working at a casino, we’ll say that, [both laughs] as a craps dealer, if that’s even a thing. That’s one instance where you’d want to get out of your job because it’s not enjoyable. Or if a job is causing you to neglect your family. That’s something to consider as well.

But let’s take all those extra examples off the table and say, I just don’t like my job because I hate washing dishes or I don’t like my job because I hate crunching numbers, or whatever the job is. Or I don’t like being out in the cold when it’s early in the morning and have to sit there and do construction or… not sit and do construction, but you get the idea. To work construction.

To answer this question, we’ve to talk about the premise of work. Work is good. When God put Adam and Eve in the garden, He said, “Work the land basically. Subdue the earth. Have dominion over it.” That was a good thing. It’s not like they were sitting in the Garden of Eden and just sipping mimosas, and sitting back in the lounge in their chair and that was it. They were working the land. So work is good. But then the whole fall thing happened and work all of a sudden was not so good.

Let’s read Genesis 3 starting in verse 17. It says this, “And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.’”

That’s the whole fall thing. Alright. So it’s kind of built into a fallen creation that work is not always going to be fun. That it’s going to be by toil, it’s going to be by persistence and the sweat of our brow that we bring forth the produce of the earth. Now, you may not be a farmer, you may not be making bread with your hands, but you are making-

Selena: You’re doing something that’s going to bring that sort of provision. Again, if we’re seeking a job purely for enjoyment, then that job doesn’t exist this side of heaven. There’s nothing that we can do that we will wake up every day always being excited about and ready to do. Because it’s just not perfect. Work is not perfect and we are not perfect.

Ryan: Now does that mean you double down on a job you hate? Well, no, it just means that understand that jobs aren’t always great. And if you disliked the job, okay, why do you dislike it? If the reasons you dislike it are legitimate, then begin to make a strategy to find another job, but don’t just quit cold turkey.

Selena: And I think doing that with your wife, right? Doing that with your spouse is one of the most important things they can do is having these conversations of, “Hey…” I mean, I was in a job… I was a marketing manager for an engineering firm and I had a boss who was pretty intense about things. I don’t know.

Ryan: He was a jerk.

Selena: Yeah. He was not great. So Ryan even came in and confronted him once. I mean I would wake up early go to the gym for two hours, go to work so early so I could get off early, and then go to the barn, ride my horse for two to three hours and come home late and then just start the process. It was just so much anxiety and so much frustration and so much-

Ryan: Because you were trying to get it done.

Selena: I was just trying to get it done and get out of there. And then we decided to refinance our first home and I was like, “Ryan, I’m gonna quit this week. I think I need to get out of this because it’s unhealthy.” And he’s like, “Can you stay for two more weeks?” Because they’re gonna call and verify employment. And I was like, “Oh my goodness. I don’t know I can do it.” It was a horrible time in my life.

But at the same time, [00:15:00] I will say that the Lord has constantly used it to remind me of His love for me, of my value despite whatever lack I may have in a job. Which I don’t think I lacked. He was a retired military guy and he was just really mad about things.

Ryan: It was blatantly toxic.

Selena: It was very toxic.

Ryan: And I mean that in like actual, not in woke version of that word. But it was actually bad for you.

Selena: But for me to go in.

Ryan: So as a husband, well, yeah, I stepped in and said, “You need to quit that.” But that was an objective reason, not just you just didn’t dislike it.

Selena: Right. But we talked about. It wasn’t just like I came home and was like, “You know what? I quit my job.” I mean, this was months of coming to this. I don’t think I had much lined up. But my grandma was really ill and she was paying for caretakers to come in and I said, “Well, what if I take care of you and you can pay me less than that or something.” God always provides, I think, that next step when you need to. But the important piece here is just don’t do it alone.

If it’s the husband searching out another career, talk to your wife, get her thoughts and advice. You’re a team. Be one in this. You don’t need to be combative about it. You’re already dealing with so much at work, obviously.

Ryan: I just want to talk a little bit about work, again, the nature of work and a man who’s working. In my view, in the life of a man who works, there’s two perspectives when it comes to how you approach your work. There’s what I call the passion mentality and the craftsman mentality.

And to make just a really quick distinction between them, the craftsman seeks to bring value through his work, whereas someone who’s working with a passion mentality seeks to extract value from his work. So I’d want to do something because I love it because it feeds my soul. Whereas a craftsman says, primarily not that he doesn’t enjoy his work, but a craftsman say, I want to do something because it brings value to the community.

So if you think of a craftsman who’s making a table, he’s not trying to make you a table as an artistic expression of his passion for table making. He’s making you a table because he wants to see that table last your family for generations.

So what happens is you have people in the workforce, and I’ll say this, I think it’s Gen Z, now they’re entering the workforce in it. And maybe the late millennials. And a lot of early Millennials like us, they go to a job and they are like, “Am I passionate about this work?” Does it feed my passion?”

And as soon as that job stops feeding that passion, that job is on the chopping block. As opposed to, “Am I bringing value to the community, to the world, to the kingdom of God through this work?” As opposed to that being the primary thing.

So obviously, you can kind of tell that by how I’m explaining these. I think the craftsman mentality is far more in line with what the Bible teaches as an attitude toward work. One of the passages that is kind of the main work passage is in Colossians 3:23. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” Not for men. That includes me. Now, do I love what we get to do? Absolutely. Do I do it simply because I love it? Well, I’ll tell you what, if I did it because I loved it, I’d only do it about a quarter of the time. So craftsman mentality.

So I want to challenge this husband and any husband out there or any wife for that matter. Are you approaching your work with a passion mentality trying to harvest things from that job that are of personal importance, personal gain, to bring personal significance? Is that your primary motivation? Or are you primarily motivated by bringing skill to the craft that you might bring value to the community?

Selena: I guess my question is, can it be both? Because I think there were some days-

Ryan: I don’t wanna interrupt. It’s a question of which one’s primary.

Selena: Primary. Sure.

Ryan: So you can love what you do, but then be a craftsman worker or you can love what you do and be a passion worker. Because if it’s your passion it ends up being your craft as well. I’m saying that there’s a primary motivation somewhere.

Selena: I also want to speak to this too, because, again, like I said, it’s your destiny, your dream job, again, if you’re trying to harvest something out of it, it’s not out there. Sorry to burst anybody’s bubble, but when we were young, I was like, “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna do these big things and I can’t wait to do this.”

Ryan: Yeah, that’s it.

Selena: And you have to go through the steps of just kind of, okay, we were a janitor and barista for a few years early in our marriage. And then we started kind of spreading our wings to other things. He worked for the state and I worked for an engineering firm and we kind of spread our wings a little bit more.

It just kind of was one step in front of the other. But it wasn’t without prayer. It wasn’t without wisdom. It wasn’t without seeking wisdom and from our community and our families, people that were ahead of us.

And again, having this mentality of we want to steward these jobs well, even when we don’t enjoy them, even and especially when we don’t enjoy them. How can I still be a light in a dark place? How can I still be there for someone or you know, show up 1,000% when I just don’t want to?

Ryan: Well, I would argue that part of… Even if you’re in a job at a young age, it’s more likely you’ll be in a less enjoyable job. Because grant you’re at the bottom, you have to start earning your way up [00:20:00] to the more enjoyable.

Selena: And that’s good because-

Ryan: The part of the craft then is this is a means by which I’m adding value to my family.

Selena: I’m providing, yeah.

Ryan: And I’m gonna do the best I can at the workplace but I’m also going to do it regardless of how I feel, because this is what I do as a man seeking to provide to my family.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: So we’re gonna move through the last few of these fairly quickly. Another the premise embedded in this question is, a wife should support every decision her husband makes. Now, I know that the author didn’t come out and say that. But she did say this: “How can I support him in his decisions, but still be realistic with him?”

So in that, if or how and then but statement that she’s making, she wants to support him, sees the importance of that but then also sees the importance of being realistic. And so this kind of outlines, should a wife be supportive all the time? And the answer is just no. Some decisions are just downright foolish. And a wife who supports her husband making foolish decisions is herself a fool.

Selena: Right. We’re called to be helpers.

Ryan: And she’s relegating her helper’s responsibility. So some decisions are foolish. But a wife should support her husband in wise and godly decisions. Now, what if the decision is unclear?

Selena: Right. How do you know if it’s a wise or godly decision? And how do-

Ryan: We have to read our Bibles and we have to discern, and we have to pray.

Selena: And we have to communicate with one another. We can’t be saying, “Well, it’s just rude when you ask me those things.”

Ryan: We’ll get to that part.

Selena: This is not… Okay. [chuckles]

Ryan: Sorry, I wrote rundown this time. So if a decision is risky, if this husband’s coming to you and saying, “You know I don’t like my job. I’ve been looking at the other opportunities, this is something that I think is a really good fit, I can bring value here., the pay is 30% less, but I think the pay will be up where we need it to be within a few months or whatever.” That’s a calculated risk. So as a family, you need to calculate that risk.

And then here’s an encouragement. Once you pull the trigger on that, if you do, don’t throw it in his face with chaos.

Selena: Yeah, don’t look back and throw it.

Ryan: You’re taking the step together. So don’t say, “Yeah, I approve.” And then if it doesn’t materialize-

Selena: You both jump in.

Ryan: …then you throw it in his face six months down the line. And now you’ve further the division.

Selena: Both jump in. It’s not one of you got one foot in, and the others got two. You’re together.

Ryan: In that sense, I think a wife should be recklessly supportive of her husband in a really good way. And it’s in agreement. This is the one Selena was talking about. A wife should be able to ask her husband about his career paths or plans whenever, however. [Selena chuckles] That premise is kind of baked into this. Because she says, “Anytime we talk he get irritated.”

Selena: But the however is important because wives can come across very policing and very interrogating and naggy. If you’re just thinking about what you want, the house and the kids, then there’s so much more to be had the conversation. And I’m not saying it’s just boiling down to this and then that’s what they’ve said. But there’s a way to go about these conversations.

If he’s saying you’re being rude and he gets irritated, well, why does he get irritated? Is it the wrong time to bring up this conversation? Are you being naggy about it? Are you doing it from a place of encouragement and you want to understand him? Because those will take on very tones and those will come across a very differently when you are actually talking about it.

Ryan: So there’s almost a million ways to complain. And one of the ways wives can complain is by asking questions a certain way at a certain time in a certain context. So like, “You’re going to do this? Did you do this? Did you take care of this? I’m just asking questions.” But really I’m kind of I’m nagging you, I’m complaining. So there is a way to be sensitive, or there’s a way to complain in those ways.

So as a wife, and as a husband, because husbands can do it too, we need to be mindful of the timing and the tone, because it’s virtually… Like you could ask the same question 10 different ways and nine of those ways would be wrong.

Selena: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think wife should absolutely be able to ask her husband and they should be talking. Talking about a job is a mutual thing. It’s not something that they should be doing… Because if the husband’s providing and the woman’s depending, there’s got to be conversation around that.

Ryan: Again, with the exception of like, “Yeah, my boss asked me to embezzle today, which I’m not gonna do, so I quit.”

Selena: Absolutely. I support you 100%.

Ryan: That’s obviously a different circumstance. Now, if you’re bringing this up in times when the chances of productive conversation are good and still the husband is getting irritated, then he’s shrugging off the question, he’s avoiding the question, he’s not… That husband needs to be called to the [inaudible].

“You’re not doing anything to assure your wife. You’re not doing anything to lead her through this. You’re just leaving her to process it with all these variables that she clearly doesn’t understand what’s going on and you’re either avoiding it or you’re not sharing what’s happening.” So that’s on the husband. He needs to open up. Like grow into [00:25:00] emotional maturity and let your wife partake in what’s happening in your mind.

And on that note, I want to read from 1 Peter 3:7. It says, “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” That’s funny. That verse always gets people ruffled.

Selena: We always talk about it.

Ryan: He’s talking about the stature of a woman. It’s weaker vessel. Women are physically not as strong as men, no matter how much they can squat. [both laughs]

Selena: I mean, it just speaks to Ephesians 5. Again, you know, the husband giving himself up and loving his wife as Christ loves the church. So an act of love is communicating with your wife. An act of love is sharing, “Okay, these are the reasons why I feel irritated when we have these conversations,” or “These are the reasons why I want to quit my job. What do you think?” That is an act of love to open up that door. It’s not loving to keep your wife at bay for that.

Ryan: Right. Right. How do we encourage this couple? We have some very tangible encouragement. If this sounds like you, if you’re actually this couple, here we go. Moving forward, what might you do?

Number one, keep talking. It may be tempting at this time to resign yourself to this dysfunction because you just haven’t been able to find a peaceful conversation around it. But you got to keep talking. Don’t be passive. It’s unsustainable to do so.

Selena: Right. It’s a stepping stone into the future of your marriage as well. Because how you deal with this conflict now is going to really determine I think how you’re able to approach other difficult choices, life changes, everything that comes along with being married longer together.

Ryan: Number one, keep talking, like we just said. Number two, get counsel from wiser people. You’re young. Go ask others, “What do you think? Here’s what our job situation is? Here’s our financial situation. How can we find a way forward where I can get out of this job?” And this is the trick, you have to actually do what they advise you to do.

Selena: And be open to it.

Ryan: Take it to heart. Because unpracticed wisdom is just informed foolishness. You need to put the wisdom into practice, otherwise, you’re just an informed fool. So that’s number two. Number three. What’s number three?

Selena: Pray together about your next steps. So, again, praying for agreement, praying for unity, asking the Lord to lead you, to make it clear. Of course, He’s not going to lead you with a cloud of smoke and fire by day like he did the Israelites through the desert, right? But I think we can genuinely both say that when we decided to take a step in a different direction in terms of our jobs or career and we sought wisdom, we kept talking, we prayed together, the Lord was clear in answering and directing our steps. So I think that praying, expecting, asking, petitioning.

Ryan: And even when you don’t know the clear route forward, stay faithful. I’m gonna amend what you said because God hasn’t always been really clear with us. But He’s led us and in hindsight, we thought, “Oh, yeah, he was leading us the whole time.” We’d have never made those decisions unless God was just kind of leading us with carrot on a stick, is what it felt like.

Selena: Yes. It’s okay to have carrots-

Ryan: We thought we were going for reason A, we arrived for reason B and stayed for reason B.

Selena: Amen. Amen.

Ryan: So keep talking. Get wisdom, get counsel, pray together. This one is huge and irreplaceable. Read the Bible in context together. No other books. No other book. The Bible. Read it in context together as much as you can.

And the reason I’m saying this is because this is where we start to get wisdom. If you’re a young couple… I wish someone would have come up alongside us at year three of our marriage, because we got married 20, year three and said, “Read your Bible every year together.” This far we would have read our Bibles together almost over two dozen times.

Selena: We’ve read our Bibles, but just not together usually. We’ll talk about what different readings we’ve been doing. But we’re actually going through the Bible reading plan together.

Ryan: Right. So the wisdom that comes from that is if you can’t find it anywhere else in any other books, or read the Bible together. And the final step is this, is when God leads because He will, trust Him and obey Him. And that’s a lot easier said than done. But still the Holy Spirit is with you to help you.

Which leads nicely into the finishing part of this video, which is, the Holy Spirit comes only because Jesus has sent him to those who are regenerate in the grace of Christ. So I think we oftentimes as believers take for granted the peace and the joy and the-

Selena: The assurance.

Ryan: …just the fortitude that the Holy Spirit gives us in the daily ups and downs of life. So if you’re not in Christ, if you don’t know who Jesus is, if you haven’t said to Him, “You are my savior, I need You,” we want to give you that opportunity. Because the reality is this: we’re all sinners in need of grace. The other reality is greater, is that Jesus died for sinners so that He might give them grace.

So if you want to be in the family of Christ, you wanna be in the family of God, we wanna invite you to check out this website: thenewsisgood.com. There’s information there and steps you can take down that path.

Let’s pray. Father God, I pray for this couple, I pray for other couples that are dealing with maybe a similar situation, trying to figured out how to transition from one job to another. [00:30:00] I pray that you’d give them otherworldly wisdom. I pray that this episode gave them just something to grab on to, something to help them take the next step down that path.

I also pray for couples that are just struggling in general, they can’t seem to find peace in the home. They can’t seem to find health in their intimate lives or in their communication or maybe their finances are a mess. Lord, strengthen them, give them hope and Lord, give them wisdom. You’ve not called us into salvation that you might abandon us on the road, but you will take us all the way there. So we trust that you will do it. We ask that you do it in our lives. In Your name, amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: Thanks for joining us. If you are still here, that means you’re probably enjoying this content. We want to invite you to be a part of our tight-knit Patreon community. That community is one of the reasons we’re still here because the last two years have not been easy on the whole economic front. [both chuckles] But our patrons have been the bulwark, have shielded us-

Selena: Yes, thank you, Lord.

Ryan: …from the storms of the economy. So go to fiercemarriage.com/partner, and there will be some details there. We’d be honored to have your partnership. That said this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

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

Selena: Stay fierce.