• Referenced scripture:
  • John 15:12-17

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: “Hard” is bad when God is not the context within which the hard is happening. In other words, it will crush you. And so a hard thing becomes a bitter thing and a bitter thing turns into death.

Selena: Well, and actually hard things can lead to deep and good blessings. We shouldn’t be afraid of that. There’s no reason to cower from that.

Ryan: Marriage is one of the primary means by which God sanctifies human beings.

Selena: Being married, you get all kinds of blessings and benefits, but it also opens the door to more conversations and challenges and sanctification.

Ryan: A lot of people, they are in a serious enough relationship where they should get married, but they don’t because they have these myths in their mind that may be inhibiting that effort. I think when it comes to money, it’s most helpful to view money as a proper tool that accomplishes certain specific tasks. Money is not a tool that can solve the emotional and communication problems in your marriage.

If you’re a selfish person, God wants that selfishness out of you. Now, if you’re a selfish person and you’re single, that selfishness may be able to flourish a lot longer.

[00:00:58]

Selena: Ryan, when we got married, what did you think marriage to me was going to be like?

Ryan: Frankly, I was stoked.

Selena: Same.

Ryan: I envisioned building life together. Now, there was a certain amount of trepidation. I remember standing… there’s a park on 72nd Street called the Wapato Park. You remember that?

Selena: Mm-hmm.

Ryan: I remember going out and there’s a dock on a lake out there, and I remember standing on that dock thinking, “What am I doing?” after we were engaged. It just hit me. And I thought, “You know what? This is my girl. What am I going to do? I’m going to marry this woman. She’s the one.” Then that thought went away.

Selena: And we got married.

Ryan: And we got married, clearly. What were you thinking when we were getting married?

Selena: I was super excited.

Ryan: Getting up to the wedding day and planning everything?

Selena: Yeah. I was really excited. I was grateful to not have to say goodnight every night. It’s like, “Bye, see you later.” I was excited to just start life together in all the ways. I think there’s always unspoken expectations that you can’t always articulate, or things that you might believe will just magically fade away when you get married, such as your selfishness.

Ryan: All of your selfishness. Sorry to say this. For you, selfishness. For me, lust, temptation, wanting to overcome that, trying to, you know, put a ring on it before my soul burns, type of thing. That was a very real consideration for 20-year-old Ryan.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: Anyway, today we’re talking about myths. Marriage myths. People, when they head into marriage, they have misconceptions, or even if they are considering marriage. And now our prayer is that you would find somebody that you start courting, not dating, courting. I’m talking to the younger people right now, of course. And with the eye toward marriage.

But a lot of people, they are in a serious enough relationship where they should get married, but they don’t, because they have these myths in their mind that may be inhibiting that effort. So today we’re going to talk about, and hopefully debunk, seven marriage myths. And we’ll do that on the other side.

[00:03:02]

Selena: So it may feel like a lot of this conversation is towards people who are looking at getting married, who are nearly married, considering marriage. But honestly, this type of conversation would have been helpful even one or two years into marriage, because there are times I think that we still believe things about what marriage should be, and they’re wrong, or they’re just untrue. And so we live that way and then there’s a clash of desires and roles and responsibilities, which is, you know, a lot of what this podcast and YouTube channel we talk about in light of the Bible and scripture and the gospel.

So don’t turn us off if you’re not in a nearly wed, newlywed stage. But yeah, we hope it blesses you no matter if you’re 5 years, 10 years, or 50 years into marriage, and you’ve got it all figured out.

Ryan: You could be 50 years into your marriage and still be in the honeymoon phase. I’m just saying, it’s possible. I’m still there, I think. It’s gotten better, I’ll say. If you don’t know who we are, we always like to introduce ourselves. My name is Ryan. This is my wife, Selena. We are the Fredericks. This is the Fierce Marriage Podcast.

It’s a joy to have you. Thank you for investing your time, whether you’re driving in your car or you’re pumping iron. I like to think that there’s gym bros that pump the iron while listening to the Fierce Marriage Podcast. If that’s you, write in, fiercemarriage.com/ask. You might get a shout-out. A-S-K.

Selena: I don’t know how you count your reps and listen to them. I forget to. Anyway.

Ryan: Yeah, you’re probably tuning us out. That’s what I would do.

Selena: Exactly.

Ryan: This is important. Why do we keep coming back every week? We’re talking about marriage. We’ve been doing this. This is going on however many episodes. 400 episodes. Why? Because we want to be the voice in your ear that reminds you week in, week out, that marriage is not just some afterthought, meaning that you dated, you got married, and now you’re just living everything else. You live within the marriage. It’s the most important human relationship.

How your marriage works is going to affect how you parent. It’s going to affect how you work, how you involve yourself in your community and in your church. Your marriage has weight to bear on all that stuff. Most importantly, it has so much to do with your relationship with Christ.

Marriage is one of the means by which God sanctifies human beings. We’re here to be that voice in your ear. So thank you for coming back. To that end, we don’t ask for this often, but share this with a friend. Even get on the whatever podcast app you’re on, if you’re on Apple Podcasts, leave a review. Five stars every time.

Selena: It’s really easy. It’s really satisfying.

Ryan: Very satisfying. We haven’t asked for that in a while, so here we are. Let’s dive right in. Five marriage myths that maybe-

Selena: Seven marriage myths.

Ryan: It was five. We added two. Same as last week. Different topic. But seven marriage myths that could be hindering your marriage or might be keeping you from taking that leap. Hopefully, we can encourage you-

Selena: Push you over the cliff to get married. How do you kick like this? It’s not a donkey kick. That’s backwards. What do you do with the front kick?

Ryan: What is that? It’s called the heel kick, I think.

Selena: Just heel-kick you over the cliff.

Ryan: It’s the Leonidas kick into the pit.

Selena: Of marriage. It’s wonderful, guys.

Ryan: This is Sparta kick of marriage. Number one, simply this. Marriage will make life easier. Now, why would this keep you from-

Selena: Well, I think we have rose-colored glasses going into marriage.

Ryan: Someone getting married wouldn’t find this as an inhibitor, but someone who is married realizes, my life is actually harder. They might think, maybe I married the wrong person.

Selena: Some days. Yes. There’s some days where you might question that.

Ryan: Are you gonna stay? We argue like, “Before I got married, I didn’t have to worry about all kinds of stuff. And now I’ve got to worry about all kinds of stuff. And I’ve got this other person that’s asking me questions I don’t feel like I have to answer.”

Selena: What are we doing tonight?

Ryan: Or like, “What do you mean you’re going to go out and go golf with your friends? We’ve got to go to this thing that I don’t want to go to.”

Selena: “I thought it was time for me.”

Ryan: Yeah. So the reality is, is marriage, I won’t say it makes life easier. I will just say it makes things better. It makes life better.

Selena: I think it makes life richer.

Ryan: I think in some ways it makes life easier though.

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: I mean, the sex thing is a thing.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: Right. Yes. We’ll talk about that in some weeks from now.

Selena: God has ordained sex for marriage. And so being married, you get all kinds of blessings and benefits, but it also opens the door to more conversations and challenges and sanctification.

Ryan: I think you can mark this podcast, friends. I think we’re entering into the golden age of making marriage great. I really do. In the kingdom, I feel like men and women are waking up. They are realizing that marriage is a way toward human flourishing. For a long, long time, we were fed this line that marriage isn’t worth it or marriage is… you know, you’re destined for divorce and all these things. It does not make things easier, but it makes things better and it’s worth it. It is worth it.

Of course, you can make your marriage unnecessarily difficult if you’re unnecessarily contentious. But the bottom line is God ordained marriage as good and therefore it’s good. And our sin nature can make it difficult because you’re learning to… So we got married young. Now, if you’re fully grown adults, I don’t think we were fully grown adults.

Selena: We were technically adults. 20 and 21.

Ryan: But I’ve seen people who get married in their mid-20s or the late 20s and they’ve got full lives to merge. In some cases, they’ve got apartments or they’ve got houses or they’ve got jobs and they’ve got even changing communities because they live in different cities. And that can make things difficult. And I’m just going to say it’s worth it.

Selena: Totally worth it. 100%. No questions. Number two, love can be lost. The myth that love can be lost. So this is a myth about what do you believe in love that you can fall in and out of love? So if I get married, what if I fall out of love with the person I marry? Oh no. What am I going to do?

Ryan: The underlying thought here is that love happens to you. It’s something that you’re walking around one day and Cupid’s dart.

Selena: Darts. It’s an arrow.

Ryan: My Cupid has darts. Cupid have a blowgun. Cupid’s arrow hits you and you think, Oh wow, love has happened to me. I found the one. The fate has shined its glorious light upon me and I hope it doesn’t change where the light is shining.

No, love is something that… there are feelings of love that I think are inherent to a new relationship. And those things are great. Like if you’re in that phase of your marriage or in that engagement period where you’re thinking, man, you just Twitter paid it. Your puppy love.

Selena: It’s so great, but it’s not sustainable for a marriage for a lifetime.

Ryan: If it is, good for you, I will say. But to expect that it will, I think is unrealistic. And I think it’s wiser to see love as something that, well, a, it’s biblical. It’s a biblical definition. We don’t define love based on the world’s vision of love. By the way, the world has no idea what love is.

It’s funny they’ll assert things about love, but they don’t have the first notion about what love is because love is a concept that we didn’t come up with. Love is something that we were given because our God is love. And He has shown us how to love us. The Bible says we love. Why? Because He first loved us. And then Corinthians, we talked about a little bit last week. It’s a marriage podcast. It’s inevitable. Love is all the things that Paul lays out. Patient, kind, long-suffering, hopes, all things.

Selena: Well, I think if you’re kind of wrestling with this myth more than anything else that, what if we fall out of love, fear is always a tactic of the enemy. And so one way we can combat it is to just acknowledge it and bring it to each other, pray about it, and then give it to the Lord every time.

I think this can come from insecurities, right? What are you consuming as well? As a to other women all the time and worrying about what if he sees another woman who’s in better shape, wears her clothes… So they’re so cute how she wears them. She’s just got it together. Like she has this aura about her. Like, what if he sees her? And then Ryan, like, what if he falls out of love with me and falls in love with her? It sounds irrational when you say it out loud, right?

But there are, I think women who deal with fear, this fear of, what if… we all do, I think of what if I’m not good enough and my spouse finds out, right?

Ryan: Yeah, for sure. Your insecurities will be put to the test.

Selena: There will always be a battle. Yeah.

Ryan: The question is, where’s that line between asking your spouse to reassure you versus you learning how to trust and how to let go of those insecurities?

Selena: Yeah. Not building codependency, but-

Ryan: You don’t want to build a codependency.

Selena: You want to build a trust in the Lord.

Ryan: Men, I trust me, your wife does not want a needy weepy guy who is always needing to be reassured. Bro, you got to stand with some gravitas. You got to know who you are in Christ. You got to know who you are to your woman, to your family, and walk in that. And that takes time to develop. So this is a bit of a rabbit trail.

Selena: Do it now.

Ryan: I think yet falling out of love is a cop-out. I think it’s a cop-out and antidote to this. I will say, okay, I’ve had eyes for you. I’ve had eyes for you. But there’s been times in our marriage when, I think I’ve mentioned in the podcast before, when we were living down South, I was going to this gym and the receptionist there was very flurry with me. And for like half a minute, I’m like, what would that be like to… I mean, it’s sinful. I was sinning. I had to turn away from this thought and repent of it. Because you never want to chase those… That’s Proverbs 4 or 5 to a t.

That’s foolishness, writ large. Like capital F Foolishness. But I think the antidote to that is actual wisdom, which is that person doesn’t believe the same thing as you. They bring all their own problems. Everything that you think is lacking in your wife, I promise they’re also lacking in this person. So just because people foolishly think that the grass is greener was a reason for the cliche. It’s not. It’s not greener. It’s the same grass.

Selena: And I think that you can’t just walk into marriage thinking, “Oh, temptation is gone. I will never be tempted again.” I think we both dealt with thoughts of feelings, getting attention from someone who wasn’t our spouse. And we had to come back and repent and talk about it. And then it just felt like the forge around us got stronger and our bond got deeper.

Ryan: Those are such pivotal moments.

Selena: Yeah, very defining.

Ryan: The enemy will 100% use that as the wedge. If you don’t confess that, it will become the crack that over time, you know, we have cracks work, water gets in there, it freezes the crack, it’s a little bit wider, wider, wider, and pretty soon it’s a gate-

Selena: Confess quickly. Confess quickly. Don’t let anything ever linger. Because that’s where the lies will continue to just, like you said, crack the foundation.

Ryan: All that to say falling out of love is a myth. Love is a choice.

Selena: And it’s a cop-out.

Ryan: And it’s a cop-out. Love is a choice and it’s yours to make. Now, does that mean it’s going to be easy? No. It just means that you have a task ahead of you and it’s a task that is done. It’s not a task that happens to you.

All right. Number three, what is it?

Selena: Hard equals bad. The myth that “hard” is bad. What is the truth to this?

Ryan: Well, hard in fact, can be good. Difficult can be a good thing. In fact, what did Jesus say? Or was it Paul who says that do not-

Selena: Count it all joy?

Ryan: Count it all joy when you face trials of any kinds. Basically don’t be surprised. Jesus said, expect persecution. In this life, in this world, they will hate you because they hate Me.

Selena: But I’ve overcome the world.

Ryan: But I’ve overcome the world. Now does your spouse hate you? That’s not what we’re saying.

Selena: This is a question you might need to ask, but no.

Ryan: Christ did not come so that our life would be without difficulty. Christ came so that our lives could be saved by Him, by His blood. And he said, you will have trial in this life. I don’t actually think marriage is any different.

Selena: Well, and actually hard things can lead to deep and good blessings. And so we shouldn’t be afraid of that. There’s no reason to cower from that. Talk to any Christian who’s walking through cancer right now or walking through a hardship in their marriage and they’re clinging to the Lord. They’ll tell you that, yeah, this is rough. This is harder than I ever imagined. I never would have asked the Lord for this, but I also trust God’s plan in this. And I trust that even though it’s hard, it’s not bad. Even though it’s not something I desire, it might be fulfilling a deeper desire for you to grow in your sanctification and who you are in Christ.

Ryan: You know when hard is bad is when Christ is not at the center of it. Hard is bad when God is not the context within which the hard is happening. In other words, it will crush you. And so a hard thing becomes a bitter thing. And a bitter thing turns into death and it makes you want death in some way. A hard thing that is given to the Lord is entrusted into His hands, turns into a sweet thing and it can cause you to grow as a couple.

And any Christian couple who’s been through a hard thing will tell you, even the hard things we’ve been through, and even some of the regrets that we have in life, decisions we’ve made, different paths we’ve taken, they turn from bitter to sweet when we look to the Lord and say, the Lord is in this and the Lord is… He’s somehow going to not waste a single second of this.

Selena: Just one last thought here. When insecurity starts to creep in, when arguments seem like they’re not ending and it feels like just a hard week is turning into a hard month, it’s turning into a hard year or something. I think one of the biggest thing we can do is acknowledge it, take it to each other and then take it to the body of Christ that is around us and say, “We need prayer, please. We are feeling like this is a very hard season. We’re not totally sure why, or maybe we do know why.”

But don’t let the arguments and kind of the disagreements and the conflict be the defining factor. Make them the red flag saying, Okay, these keep coming up. This keeps coming up. So there’s gotta be something deeper going on because I think too many times we can focus on, Gosh, we’re just arguing about this thing all the time. What is the deeper heart issue here? What are we actually wrestling with? And by God’s grace, you will go through some hard things, but it will be so much better on the other side if you’re working towards that reconciliation and you’re working towards unity.

Ryan: If you’re a selfish person, God wants that selfishness out of you. Now, if you’re a selfish person and you’re single, that selfishness may be able to flourish a lot longer and get a lot deeper and cause your soul a lot more trouble. If you’re a selfish person getting married, God may use that marriage, I will say, probably will use that marriage to root that selfishness right out.

Selena: Most likely.

Ryan: And so are you going to fight that? Are you going to learn how to be sanctified? That’s the call of a Christian life.

There’s another thought in here around heart equals bad. So we can sometimes internalize the badness because we feel like marriage itself is bad, or maybe we’ve made a mistake some in some way, but you can also internalize it because of the external consequences of that.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: And how people are viewing you. You’re comparing to your friends. You’re thinking, well, they always laugh when they’re together. They’re happy. Why aren’t we happy? They’re succeeding. Why aren’t we succeeding? And we compare. Friends, just be free of that. Comparison is-

Selena: A no-win game. It’s a no-win game.

Ryan: It’s a no-win game. It will either crush you or it will puff you up. Either way, it’s bad. Don’t compare. So if you have couples in your life who you look up to, then you can have that conversation and say, “Clearly you guys have figured out this communication thing or you figured out whatever the problem is. We’re really struggling with this. Would you be willing just to sit down with us and talk about it?

Selena: Come over for dinner.

Ryan: And maybe, if you could just ask us questions so that we can be known by you and you can help us, right? Invite them into that.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: Okay. That was number three, three. This is number four. It’s similar.

Selena: I think it can flow out of that.

Ryan: It flows out of it. The myth is this, that marriage is too hard to even try. It’s especially true if you’re headed into marriage, you’re considering engagement. You can be thinking, Well… you bought the popular statistic, which is wrong, by the way, that 50% of marriages fail. It’s wrong because there’s people that fail tend to fail more than once. And so people that have a divorce tend to have more than one divorce, maybe two, three, or even four divorces. So they add to that statistic.

It’s also especially wrong among church-going Christians. I say church-going because we live in a culture where if you have to check one of the demographic boxes, you’re not going to check agnostic or atheist, you’re going to check Christian, but really you’re not going to church, you’re not participating in church life, you’re not reading the word. You’re not functioning as a Christian. In other words, there’s no fruit.

Christians that bear fruit have extremely high marital success rates. The truth about marriage is that it’s not too hard to try. In fact, I will say you can do it.

Selena: You should do it.

Ryan: You should do it. It is worth it. God’s plan is best. And by every measure, by every measure across the board, when it comes to income, happiness, life satisfaction, health, longevity, even sickness, and disease, by every measure, those who are married are better. They’re doing better. The charts are undisputed.

And so marriage is good for you. It’s good for your health. Now, a pugnacious wife is rot to the bones, right, and a husband who is a tyrant is going to make his wife’s life miserable. So the answer to that is, marry well. Marry somebody who’s not pugnacious-

Selena: Use wisdom.

Ryan: Sorry, that’s the only way that comes contentious. There you go. Pugnacious means you’re prone to fighting, prone to arguing.

Selena: You are pugnacious. Excuse me, I’m sorry to use my word. Girls, stop being pugnacious.

Ryan: And malfeasant.

Selena: And malfeasant.

Ryan: Anyway, marriage is not too hard to try. Don’t buy the myth friends. Marriage is awesome. You’re awesome. God is awesome. There you go.

Selena: Nice progression.

Ryan: Also babies. I have babies right there. Babies are the best. Becoming a dad was just one of the biggest blessings of life. You made me a father, man. So marriage is the way that that happens.

Selena: It’s good. It’s good. All right. Number five. Should we do a quick recap of these?

Ryan: We’ll do one at the end.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: We’ll do one at the end. Number five. What is it?

Selena: More money will solve all our problems. It’ll solve the tension. Now, I don’t know that we ever… we say this in different ways in our marriage. We think that, well, if we just have more money and we have a bigger house, we can do all the things. Like if we just have more money.

It’s like this underlying constant flow of more money. We just need more money so we can get this or that or do this or do that because our friends are doing this or they have this car. We should have this car because we have a growing family and we should do this. I’m not saying that those are bad desires, but if they are again, taking top priority of your heart, your attention, your energy, your time, your level of contentment, and your level of thankfulness, then there’s definitely a problem there.

I think going into marriage, I would imagine that a Christian wants to be financially quote-unquote, prepared, to have a home and to live together because… and I think that a lot of people believe and know this. Finances, they will strain a marriage. They will absolutely strain a marriage, which one of our mottos is live beneath your means. Live beneath your means. That has…

Ryan: So there’s something to be said for wanting to move your life forward. But what you’re saying is that godliness with contentment is great gains. 1 Timothy 6.

Selena: Exactly.

Ryan: Godliness with contentment is great gain. Be content where you are while also knowing without getting covetous, without getting discontented, without shaking your fist at God, why is this not happening in my timing on my terms? Don’t do those things. But know, Hey, our family’s growing. It would be really great if the Lord provided.

One of the ways that we’ve remedied our own discontent is we started… when we wanted to buy… we bought an SUV when we had our second daughter. We needed a larger car.

Selena: In case we want to have a third.

Ryan: So we had a list of needs that that thing had to satisfy. Now there’s all sorts of SUVs, all sorts of bells and whistles, and all sorts of deals going on and reasons to buy anything other than the thing that actually satisfied the need, the way we needed it to. And so what we did is we got in our minds a very clear idea and that included the budget.

And so when Selena saw one come up, because she’s our bloodhound… You’ll find the deals. When you saw one come up, they didn’t even have pictures posted yet and you were like, “This is the one.” And I was like, “Let’s go buy it.” And we went and test-drove it and made sure it wasn’t a lemon. But that really helped with the, we know what we need, but we’re not going to just stew in our discontentment.

Selena: Right. And I think a lot of our larger purchases or necessary larger purchases have come out of a need rather than a want. There is some want there, because yes, I want more room. I want more room for our kids, for taking friends, all of that kind of stuff. But the need was, we are going to have a growing family. We want to be able to take more people with us. We want to be able to go do all the things in the mountains and whatnot and I think this vehicle will match that.

And so a lot of the desires come from a need originally. And I think that definitely keeps gratefulness and contentment at the forefront.

Ryan: I think when it comes to money, it’s most helpful to view money as a proper tool that accomplishes certain specific tasks. Money is not a tool that can solve the emotional and communication problems in your marriage. Money is not a tool that solve the dysfunction in your marriage. Now money is a tool that can solve having a car that’s too small or a house that’s too small or groceries that isn’t enough. Money can solve those tools. Money is a tool that can solve those problems, but it’s not… A lot of times we think money is a tool that can fix everything.

Selena: Right. It can fix my heart. My faithfulness problem-

Ryan: “If I can just get the car, then I won’t be so irritable with my wife.” Or “if I can just get the raise, I won’t be bitter about life.”

Selena: It’s funny how you get those things and how quickly your heart just goes right back to where it was.

Ryan: As a reminder, maybe you need it, maybe you don’t. Money is not the root of evil. The love of money is. Money is a tool. I think money is like air. It’s everywhere and it comes and it goes and it’s inconsequential. It’s used for kingdom work. So be a steward. I’ll leave it there. Money does not solve problems.

Selena: Last two. Why don’t you read this one since it’s your favorite?

Ryan: No, it’s your favorite actually.

Selena: It’s your favorite. It’s your favorite.

Ryan: You’re so vain.

Selena: Our favorite.

Ryan: Flatter yourself, Frederick. Never mind. Actually, do flatter yourself. You’re awesome.

Selena: Number six. One of the biggest myths we hear and have seen is that people think, well, sex is going to get real boring with the same person all the time. Or sex is just going to be easy and dull and not going to take any work from me and it’ll be glorious maybe even because I just can show up and that’s what it’s going to be. Right?

Selena: There’s two sides to this coin. I think you think you can just show up and it’ll be wonderful or you think it’s just going to get extremely boring.

Ryan: Yes. Sorry. I was thinking-

Selena: Neither of those things will happen. Sorry, that sounds terrible. We hope that it’s glorious. We pray that it’s wonderful, but it will take work, believe it or not.

Ryan: Talk to any married couple who have an affection for one another, they’re going to tell you it’s just getting better. It’s just gotten better. Like we would say the same thing. If you have the stomach for it, talk to older couples.

Selena: Stop. You’ve got to get the nitty gritty, but just be like, how do you keep the flame low? I don’t know.

Ryan: Nitty-gritty.

Selena: Okay. The world would tell you that sex with one person is just going to get boring or that sex should always just be passionate and… what is it? You know, anytime, spontaneous, level 10 on every single desire expectation.

When it comes down to the reality of it, it’s not. It’s not always there. But that’s by design. Like God has created it for a better, more fulfilling purpose purposes. I mean, look at any of our podcasts, look up purposes of sex, fierce marriage, you’ll get all kinds of podcasts to listen to, posts to read.

Ryan: I can’t get this analogy out of my mind.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: You’re got to hear this. I would say, I said, money’s a tool. Sex is a tool. It accomplishes certain things. It serves a purpose. What is the purpose it serves? Well, it connects you. It has all the benefits of it being the effective thing at accomplishing the task that it is supposed to accomplish. But if you think of it like that, I think of like you can use and wield the tool to accomplish the thing in any manner of way. And it’s still going to accomplish the thing.

So the analogy that I had in my head was if you’ve got to wash the car, you can just get out there and just kind of wash the car and get it done. Car’s still clean. Looks just the same. Or you can get out there and dress a certain way, get a good foamy lather, froth it up a little bit. I could wear my cutoffs for you. I don’t have cutoffs. I could have cutoffs though. Just give me some scissors.

Selena: No. No. That’s okay.

Ryan: But the thing is you can go about washing that car any number of ways and it’s going to just be a clean car at the end of the day. So, you know, you got to demystify it, realize that it’s your… What I love about married sex is that it’s your adventure to have. You have to work together.

Selena: It’s your garden to cultivate.

Ryan: That’s the lady way to say it.

Selena: It’s your adventure.

Ryan: I’m Indiana Jones. I’m raiding that temple of doom.

Selena: Oh my. There’s a lot of information on all of our platforms, so please go and check that out. We talk about sex a lot.

Ryan: You always think we talk about sex a lot. We talk about like one every 10 episodes that comes up. It’s not that much.

Selena: Anyways, sex-

Ryan: We talk about beliefs the most.

Selena: Sex has a lot of many purposes. We’ll leave it at that. So it does not get boring. It will get better. Iit takes work, just like anything. It’s what you make of it.

Ryan: It is. If it gets boring, it’s on you. If it’s awesome, it’s on you. Good job.

Selena: Number seven.

Ryan: Your personal problems will, poof, disappear. When you get married, your personal problems will go away.

Selena: You become a better person. I mean, I’m just the best, and life is easier.

Ryan: Do people believe this? In our pre pandemic-

Selena: It’s the twitterpated mode.

Ryan: When we were talking about this, we thought, “You know, some people believe these things but don’t realize that they believe these things.” They wonder, you know, when they merge their life that the messy person they always were will somehow not be that person anymore.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: You’re still gonna be the person who leaves the bathroom a mess.

Selena: You sure are. Just kidding.

Ryan: You’re still going to be the person that whatever the bad habit was. Again, the marriage isn’t just going to change you.

Selena: It will over time, God willing.

Ryan: It will.

Selena: But wherever you go, there you are.

Ryan: Amen. So your spouse is there to help you to that end, right? That you now have… you’re not on your own trying to root out the selfishness, root out whatever these root causes to your personal dysfunction. But you have somebody. So if you see them as a helper, as somebody who is there for the purpose of making you more like Christ, then you will be thankful for those problems that persist until they don’t anymore because you realize you’re dealing with that stuff.

Selena: Well and I think one of the underlying factors, you touched on this a lot, is, one of the underlying factors in why we believe the lies or we tend to, you know, think the myths are reality about marriage is because we don’t understand who Christ is. We don’t understand what love is. We’ve been looking all around on social media or reading just all kinds of wherever, of what love should be or is when John 15:13 starting in verse 12, tells us what it means to love like Christ, to die to oneself and how these are the distinctives of love.

So John 15 starting in verse 12, “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” Command. You hear that? Commandment. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, a for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.”

Ryan: Amen. Amen. We don’t love our way; we love Christ’s way. And getting married doesn’t make all of our faults go away, our personal problems go away. In some ways, they amplify them, but not to-

Selena: There’s none there, right?

Ryan: …they’re amplified, and they’re dealt with so that we can become the children of God that Jesus is calling us. Not just servants. You’re children. We’re brothers of Christ because we have been adopted as sons of God, as sons and daughters of God. That’s a beautiful thing.

So, love, biblically, is at the base of this. Otherwise, love is whatever we say it is, in which case, you could just change your mind on love, and I change my mind on love, and pretty soon we no longer love each other. Well, not good.

We actually have one more. I was mistaken because the numbers were wrong. Don’t we have one more? Well, we’re gonna give you one more. And this is a marriage myth that I think has really cropped up over the last five years. But it’s been real for longer than that. And it’s the idea that marriage is too risky for husbands, it’s too risky for wives.

And why is it too risky for husbands? Well, a lot of men are afraid of marriage because they are afraid that if the woman they married decides one day to change her worldview, which happens, it does happen. They get into the wrong chat group. They get into the wrong social group at work. Whatever happens, it happens to husbands and wives. Their worldview radically changes. Especially over the last five years, we’ve had some very polarizing times.

So husbands are afraid that, you know, if my wife gets changed her worldview, she can leave, take half of everything, and take the kids. And now I’m stuck without the kids. I’ve lost half of everything, and now I have to pay for the kids I can’t even see when I want to. And the husband is powerless to do that because our court system is pretty against men at the moment.

No fault divorce, and she doesn’t have to have a reason for it. Like, even if he doesn’t have an affair, even if whatever. So men are afraid of that. And I will say that that fear is not unfounded. I just think that puts the emphasis on marrying somebody who believes what you believe and having those conversations upfront.

And that don’t just marry someone because they’re physically attractive. Newsflash, that’s gonna change. That that fades. What you know, what you believe, who you who you believe in, Christ especially, never changes.

Selena: Thank you, Lord.

Ryan: That’s how you dispel that myth. I would say go with eyes open. I think some women are afraid of marriage because they, I guess, maybe they feel like, what if I marry a guy that is untrustworthy?

Selena: Yeah. What if I marry a guy who’s kind of a narcissist, right?

Ryan: Well, some of them are gonna use because they’ve had bad experiences in there.

Selena: He’s just gonna use me for whatever he wants, and I’m just gonna be expected to do all these things that I don’t wanna do. So why should I hassle with it?

Ryan: I’d be curious to hear some feedback on whether or not that myth is prevalent or not, whether women… I think women are more prone to wanting to lock it down.

Selena: I think generally speaking, yes. But I do think that the consideration for the disadvantages is pretty heavy, I think, and high.

Ryan: So there you have it, folks. We have, one-

Selena: Eight.

Ryan: Eight myths on marriage.

Selena: Not seven.

Ryan: Not seven. We’re bad at counting.

Selena: Or five.

Ryan: One myth is that you’ll get better at counting. Number one is marriage makes things easier. Number two is you can fall out of love. That’s a myth. Number three myth is that hard is automatically bad. Number four myth is that marriage is too hard, so why even try? The fifth myth is that money will solve all your problems. The sixth myth is that sex will get boring. The seventh myth is that your personal problems will just, poof, go away. And the eighth myth is that marriage is too risky because of divorce laws and things like that.

So hopefully, we’ve started to debunk those. Or maybe we’ve definitively debunked those.

Selena: Yeah, I think so… I mean, I think there’s a lot of places.

Ryan: Busted. Mythbuster.

Selena: Busted. Mythbusters. This is the-

Ryan: Oh, there we go.

Selena: …eight marriage mythbusters.

Ryan: Oh, man. We should use that early on. No. I don’t know if this thing has kinda run its course. We’ll see. You’ll know by the time you get this video.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: Speaking of Mythbusters, have you heard the gospel lately? You know, we’re actually headed into Easter as we record this.

Selena: We’re in Holy Week right now.

Ryan: So it’s to come out after Easter. But we’re in Holy Week right now. We’re gonna do Good Friday. Or no. Good Friday this week, but also we’re doing a Passover dinner celebration tomorrow night. We record on Wednesdays.

So, yeah, a lot of folks would say Christ is a myth. Like, He’s a mythical character. He’s a mythical teacher. That he did something socially. He accomplished something in building a following. But they’ll say He’s really not God. He’s just a guy who was very charismatic and good at what He did. That’s not a myth. That’s not the truth, I’ll say, is that that flies in the face of the historical evidence we have, the reality of the biblical record.

Now people will say, oh, it’s in the Bible using circular reasoning. Well, the reason it’s in the Bible is because it tells the story of Jesus. Now Christ is the center of scripture, and the scriptures tell about Him. So, of course, it’s in the Bible. But the attestation for, and what I mean by that, the manuscript tradition, the manuscript record for the Bible, is better than any other ancient manuscript.

We have all sorts of tangible historical reasons, we have all sorts of reasons in the biblical narrative as to why the resurrection actually did happen. Friends, it is not a myth. Jesus Christ walked the earth. He is God in the flesh. He died fully. The Romans killed him on the cross. The Romans do not make mistakes when they crucify.

Selena, you were you were talking to me about how utterly injured and bloodied He would have been. You would have been able to see Christ’s ribs through His back after He was whipped and then had it carried the cross. And then just the excruciating, humiliating death that He suffered.

Selena: And then being abandoned by His father. Forsaken is what the word is. Forsaken. Utterly forsaken. We don’t know-

Ryan: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Selena: We don’t know that forsakenness, that level of forsakenness.

Ryan: The point is that the Romans did not make a mistake. He actually did die. He actually did raise from the grave. And friends, this changes everything. So if you don’t know that Jesus, if you’ve thought, you know, maybe He’s just a myth, He’s just kind of a good teacher, He’s just a moral guy, just wanna be a good guy like Him, Judge not. No. Don’t judge anyone, you know, and just all the kind of truisms that Jesus that people pull out of Jesus culture, that sort of thing. No.

You need to know the God of the Bible, Jesus Christ of the scriptures. Why? Because it could change your eternity forever. And we want that for you. If you wanna know what it means to become a Christian, we have a website for you. Go to thenewsisgood.com. There’s a church finder there that I think will lead you to a good faithful Bible preaching church.

We also say, if you have any friends who are Christians, talk to them. Ask them to read the Bible with you. I’m sure they will. And if they won’t, find someone else. But either way, we pray that you follow Christ because He’s everything. He’s everything.

Let’s pray. Lord God, thank you for the gift of marriage. Lord, I pray you help us to see things rightly, to understand your truth, to walk in that truth, to know that these myths are not real, that marriage is good, that love is an action, that sex is a gift from you that gets better the way you’ve designed it within the confines of marriage, the way you’ve given it to us.

But help us to trust and walk in your truth in marriage. I pray for the couples who are struggling, the husbands or the wife who feel like they’re at their wits’ end, that you would give them a fresh breath of hope and endurance to power through, to carry on, to carry their cross if need be, and to be a light in their marriage. And I pray, Lord, you give them healing. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: Amen. All right. This episode of the Fierce Marriage podcast is wrapping up, but I wanna talk about our patrons really quickly. If you are still here, you’re going to hear about our latest patrons, and we would like to invite you to become one of them. So here they are.

We have Cara. Welcome to the Fierce Fellowship. We have, let’s see, Adria. Welcome. We have Nicole. Welcome, Nicole. Chevy or Chevy, welcome. So good to have you. Maybe you should tell me how to pronounce your name. Dana Kai, welcome to the Fierce Fellowship. Also, Jason, and let’s see, Ashlyn and Blake. Welcome to the Fierce Fellowship. Thank you so much.

Selena: Balake?

Ryan: Balake.

Selena: I don’t know what to mention that.

Ryan: Blake? What are you talking about? Anyway, that’s an inside joke. Not so inside. Lots of people know that reference. All right. So if you wanna join the Fierce Fellowship, we’d be honored, go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. That’s one of the main ways God has seen fit to provide for this ministry. So we’re thankful for that. We’re thankful for you.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: Either way, this episode of The Fierce Marriage Podcast is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: And we’ll see you again, Lord willing, in about seven days. So until next time—

Selena: Stay fierce.