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Selena: I got a question for you.

Ryan: Yes. Yes ma’am.

Selena: How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends? [both laughs] Lemme say this. Michael Golden has a question for you. [both laughs]

Ryan: You know, that’s a good question. Because We had a conversation a while back where you were saying, you know… you said something about how husband and wife should be friends. And I said to you, yes, but calling you a friend is a demotion.

Selena: Well, we talked about best friend. You were like, You’re my best friend but that kind of feels like, what you said, a demotion from-

Ryan: From the station of wife.

Selena: Of wife.

Ryan: Yeah. And you’re giving a talk in the next, in the coming weeks to a group of ladies, and it’s all about friendship in the marriage. So how should a husband view his wife in terms of their friendship and vice versa, the wife viewing her husband? It’s a conversation worth having and thinking seriously about. Because while friendship is important, I think we… we do wanna say that: friendship and marriage is important.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: Is important but it is a demotion from the station and the title, if you will, of husband or wife, given what the covenantal boundaries are and what the depth of what covenant can be. So today we’re gonna look at friendship in marriage, it’s roles, it’s functions, and how to see it rightly and cultivate it. So we’ll see you on the side.

[00:01:19]

Selena: It’s already feeling warm in here. Just kidding.

Ryan: Starting to turn.

Selena: Gotta put the hair up. Gotta put the hair up.

Ryan: Now, officially it’s May, which means it’s-

Selena: May.

Ryan: …start to heat up a little bit in these parts, [laughs], but chances are it doesn’t heat up as much as it heats up most of our listeners.

Selena: Other parts.

Ryan: In other parts. [Selena laughs] Not in the polling. Holy cow. If I sound a little bit stuffy, it’s because I am, my head feels like someone shoved a thousand cotton balls up in there. It doesn’t feel great. So-

Selena: Doesn’t feel great. I’m sorry.

Ryan: I fear that it’s affecting my thinking, so.

Selena: Well, we’ll just have to see about it. See how it goes.

Ryan: Yes, see how it goes. If this is your first time to the podcast, welcome. My name is Ryan. This is my lovely wife Selena. We’re the Fredericks. We do this every Tuesday-ish. Although we did miss last Tuesday because life is hard and we missed-

Selena: He had a final or something like that.

Ryan: We had no time.

Selena: Kids were sick.

Ryan: No time.

Selena: And people were sick.

Ryan: We spoke at the high school and-

Selena: We did.

Ryan: We talked about family worship.

Selena: We had choir concerts. We had a speaking engagement. We had our community day, then we threw a field trip in there. [laughs]

Ryan: Yes. Anyway, welcome to the channel. Welcome to the podcast. You can hopefully see us, Lord willing, every Tuesday. So we look forward to seeing you there. We had this group of wonderful individuals called the Fierce Fellowship. Those are the individuals that I think give us, by the Lord’s grace, buffer cushion from this harsh world we live in publishing and podcasting. It’s not easy to do, but it helps our ministry. Fierce Fellowship is a huge part of that.

If you wanna join the Fierce Fellowship, there are benefits, there are good things to be had. However, we ask that you pray about it and do it out of obedience to maybe what the Lord is leading you to do. Go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. We’d be honored to have you there. All right, Selena, so you are giving a talk.

Selena: I am. I’m giving a talk in a few weeks to some ladies at a friendship seminar. One of my friends, it’s her church. She’s the pastor’s wife, and she is talking about friendships with ladies, between women… Friendship in the church can be an amazing thing, I think. Some of our greatest friendships are within the church community.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Selena: But it can also be, I think, a source, and this is what, you know, I’m talking to her husband and her. It can also be one of the biggest sources of strife and conflict within churches when friendships are… because they’re complex. Right? I mean, everybody’s got their quirks. Everybody’s got their way of doing things. And when we have questions about things like it just-

Ryan: I will say… Can I layer this in?

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: True. Friendships are complex.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: I think a lot of folks end up having-

Selena: That’s good.

Ryan: …surfacey sort of friendships.

Selena: Those are easy, yes.

Ryan: Those don’t require much.

Selena: Simple. Yeah.

Ryan: Because by the way, when it gets hard, you just check out. It’s not…

Selena: Yeah. You just keep everybody in arm’s length. Healthy, right?

Ryan: But a true friendship means you press in and through the difficulty.

Selena: Right. Why can we do that within the church? Why can we press into those conflicts and actually work towards reconciliation? What is the difference between maybe a good friend who’s not a Christian and a great friend who is a Christian? Right? It’s that gospel centrality. It’s the fact that we share the same beliefs, the same values, we submitted our lives to Christ. He saved us. Because of the gospel, we can then be committed to one another to work through things, to have a posture of humility and forgiveness and extend grace and be charitable to one another. Just having those pillars in place really I think facilitates great friendships. So if those are not in place and you don’t have a gospel, you don’t share the same, you know-

Ryan: Horizon as Lewis says

Selena: Horizon, yeah.

Ryan: You’re looking at the same thing, headed the same way-

Selena: Yeah. I mean, your friendship’s gonna be… I’m speaking in general not of your marriage, but your friendship will be shallow and pretty lackluster and pretty simple and easy, like you said. But you won’t be going through hard things. You won’t be kind of developing that layer of richness with the friends that you’ve been friends with for decades and decades. I mean-

Ryan: I can hear some voices maybe saying, well, I can have a deep friendship with a nonbeliever. I think there’s a relative depth that can be had by the grace of God. That you can share… We’ve talked about this in communication a lot, is when you communicate with somebody, you get to know somebody, you get to know their very soul.

And so I think there is a sense in which you can be good friends with a nonbeliever. In another sense, we are called to befriend the sinner.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: They might see the salt and light that you are.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: But there is so much more to be had when you actually begin to build your friendship on the things of God and you root your friendship in the reality of God. There’s no depth to be compared to that.

Selena: It’s a different posture. When I am speaking to you, Christian to Christian, believer to believer versus me… yes, I can share, but I can share from my perspective and my unbelieving friend or somewhat inactive, you know, calls themselves a Christian friend is not gonna be able to go with me into the depths of certain conversations. They’re not gonna encourage me in the right way. They’re not gonna be somebody that I want to pour my soul out to because I don’t always trust the response that they’ll give me because they’re not centered on Christ. Right? I have to filter more of what they say.

Ryan: So is everything that you’ve just said, would that also apply to a husband and a wife as friends?

Selena: Yeah. I think a lot of it would.

Ryan: Okay.

Selena: The unique piece, obviously, to a friendship in marriage is that you are married. Right? Your friendship is within the bounds of your covenant. Your friendship is governed by your covenant. It is enforced and supposed to be acted out within the roles that God has given you as husband, leader, head, wife, you know, submissive and helper.

So if your friendship goes outside of any of this, and you know, we’ll talk about examples of what this might look like or how this has looked, then you’re not using the tool the way God has, I think, given it to you to use. You’re not using it in the way that you should.

Ryan: So friendship is tool.

Selena: Friendship in marriage is a blessing and a tool because it can be wielded to, again, build up your covenant, bring you more unity, have more enjoyment and, you know, fun moments in life. Or people use their friendship and familiarity with each other to manipulate or get something they want or, you know, usurp their husband’s headship in some ways, you know, dictating to them how they should be dealing with them.

Ryan: I wonder if we should do a study. What would it look like if you studied the various marriages in scripture? And try to see their friendship. What comes to mind is Ruth and Boaz. That to me is probably the most… like you think about Abraham-

Selena: Most revealing of a friendship between a husband and wife.

Ryan: Because there’s a kindness being exchanged and given and extended and received and desired. There’s a response to that kindness.

Selena: There is.

Ryan: Does that happen with Abraham and Sarah? Does it happen with…

Selena: I know. These were the questions I asked. I’m kind of sifting through this talk here and there. You don’t see a passage on marriage in friendship. You see a passage on marriage. You see a passage on friendships. You see wisdom, you see foolishness. You see why we have certain friends, how a husband is supposed to act, how a wife is supposed to act. But it’s not ever explicitly written out that a husband has to act like a friend, like this towards his wife. Right?

Ryan: Right.

Ryan: Friendship’s kind of like the in-between of what happens between us. But is it honoring God too? There is just kind of this… I don’t know. I think I said like, if marriage was your house, then the decorations, the warmth of the home is like your friendship.

Ryan: Sure.

Selena: So if you don’t have a good friend, a deep friendship, you don’t share a lot of the same, you know, values, it’s hard to really have experiences together that are of any value. Does that make sense?

Ryan: Yes.

Selena: Okay. So going to scripture, Ephesians 5 talks about, again, how we are supposed to love and treat one another. Husband leads and loves and gives of himself. The wife helps submits, gives of herself. Both are called to sacrifice and love one another. Can you read Romans 5:7-8? Because this is kind of where Paul talks about friendship a little bit.

Ryan: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ is both our motivator. He’s our example of how we are to love and treat our neighbors. So in kind of trying to find this intersection between marriage and friendship, where do those two ideas…?

As I think through the catalog of what I know in the Bible, I’m like, it feels like marriage friendship or friendship within marriage is either assumed taken for granted. Meaning that of course, Abraham and Sarah were friends. Of course, Adam and Eve had a friendship. Of course, you know, name a couple. Godly couple. Or, here’s the cynical side of me, or it’s ignored because it just wasn’t seen as important or didn’t need to be emphasized. And that it’s kind of an after-the-fact.

Here is where I get that is this idea of dating and romance and going on weekly dates as a couple, that’s a very recent development in human history.

Selena: Since when did families not have time to spend with each other?

Ryan: Or when was there that emphasis placed on the emotional satisfaction you’re getting out of a marriage?

Selena: Sure. It seemed much more utilitarian than that for most of human history. Like, try to imagine somebody in medieval, you know, Anglo-Saxony, whatever-

Selena: There was a-

Ryan: It’s not like this-

Selena: There’s not function to why you got married. Like it was to have children to build up your workforce and-

Ryan: Yeah. And then you do read maybe some-

Selena: They loved each other.

Ryan: …more reformed… during the reformation, that period, you have some guys are gushing with affection for their wives and their writings. And others it’s like the dude was always traveling, he was always writing, he was always preaching and he didn’t seem to care about his family at all. Right?

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: I’m not saying those are models. I’m just saying that it’s hard to find a cohesive picture of-

Selena: Agreed.

Ryan: So I guess the reason I wanna bring that up here is because we need to know, I always say this, the water we’re swimming in. And the idea of friendship and the priority placed on the friendship between husband and wife is a fairly recent phenomenon.

Selena: Yes. It feels like the boulder I keep tripping over as I kept looking to scripture for where is there friendship? Was there a friendship between Abraham and Sarah? Was there a friendship between, you know, Samson and Delilah? Was there a friendship between Solomon all his wives?

Again, God gives us the big stones of husband, wife, and then you work it out between you, what your friendship’s gonna look like. But it should not usurp the fact that your husband is the head. Right? 1 Corinthians 11:3, “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Ephesians 5, again, husbands love your wives.

The dynamic of head and helper and submission is never set aside under the guise of friendship. It’s always within these boundaries. So your friendship should really augment and solidify your marriage. It should build up into what scripture outlines. It shouldn’t be anything outside of that.

You had said this, you were like, you know what? You should just open your talk with like, your husband’s not your friend. [laughs] I was like, that would go over really well. It might. Because it’s true. Why did you say that? Why did you say that?

Ryan: Well, it’s kinda what we opened the episode with is the trick is that your husband is a friend of yours. They’re not just your friend is what that means. They’re more than your friend. They’re your friend and so much more. That’s why I said that because so often that it stops there.

Selena: It does.

Ryan: That’s what you’re driving at is… because you say, I view you as my friend, my equal, my partner is language that usually use. I don’t particularly like partner because it just feels weird to me. Although we are partners-

Selena: You’re my dance partner and we’re partners in a lot of things. I find safety, comfort and security in the fact that you’re the head.

Ryan: This finally is coming to me. Because friendship, it doesn’t have the baked in order that you’ve just described. Husband and wife has a baked in God-ordained, God-blessed order. Now, before the feminists jumped down our throats-

Selena: I don’t care. They can jump.

Ryan: Whatever. It’s not about worth value, importance. It’s about order. Selena, you’ve used the S word here, submissive.

Selena: Submissive. I’ll use it again. I’ll keep using it.

Ryan: Yeah. Because we don’t have to apologize for what God has put in scripture.

Selena: No.

Ryan: No. If someone wants to talk about the hermeneutics of that passage or whatever, that’s fine. But the point is that order is there for our good. The reason why I harped on the idea of friendship being a demotion is for that reason, right, is because it does not have baked into it the order that God’s given us.

Selena: Right. So if we compare and contrast, like if your husband… I have a few examples here. So if your husband is your covenant marriage partner for life, that doesn’t mean that he’s your yes man. He’s your husband, he’s not just your friend that agrees with you all the time and you do all the fun things together. Right? Yes. You should have fun in your marriage, but ultimately your husband is your head. He is not your son. You are not his mother. He’s your head. And so with that comes all of what we’ve talked about earlier in this episode.

The second thing is he’s a man. Right? He’s not your hair-brushing, gossiping girlfriend who should always agree again with everything you say, part of the yes man. And when wives push that… I think wives, believe it or not, some wives want their husbands to just be that girlfriend to them. Then the problems start arising when he doesn’t wanna be that, or he asserts himself in the mainly husband way and then wives start grumbling and they start nagging their husbands. You know?

Ryan: Do you have any tangible example of this in your mind?

Selena: Samson and Delilah. No. [laughs] Strongest man in the world nag to death.

Ryan: What would be a tangible modern day example of a husband acting as a girlfriend for his wife? I feel like we’re processing around it because there’s something in there that doesn’t feel quite right in terms of some friendship dynamics within marriage and the tendency in our culture.

Selena: Yeah. It feels like the order is wrong.

Ryan: So when you say something like what you just said, which was some wives want their husbands to be like a girlfriend and use the example, brushing their hair, gossip, all that kind of stuff, what’s an example of that? I think what you’re driving at is, okay, let’s talk about that dynamic between women. When two ladies are hanging out and there’s the gossiping, hair-brushing, whatever that is… I know obviously grown women don’t really do the hair brushing.

Selena: Well, you should not gossip. It is a sin. So it’s a terrible example, but the-

Ryan: There’s this sense where like, you are here as a therapy partner and you are here to be the sounding board for my ideas without any leadership in it. You are there to receive blindly.

Selena: And I’m gonna just let my emotions fly-

Ryan: And if you’re a good friend, you would just listen to me.

Selena: …I’m not gonna control them. Yeah, if you’re a good friend, you’ll just listen and be like, Oh, honey.

Ryan: And I think that’s what we’re pushing back against is that a husband in that situation will say, Okay, is let’s have that meaningful risk vulnerability. You’re saying things to me. And first, if there’s gossip, let’s cut that out. We’re not gonna gossip. Where is your heart?

So a husband has a duty, a responsibility to love his wife in that situation as husband first. And that means maybe I don’t be a good friend right now-

Selena: Well, and that’s the order thing. It’s like if I want you to be my friend at the expense of being my husband, then I have a disorder. That’s a wrong desire. I should always want you to be husband before friend. And husband means that you’re gonna probably say things that don’t necessarily like pat me on the back and saying, good job. Go you. Right? When I’m-

Ryan: Yes. And of course the husband needs to do so lovingly and not always be like-

Selena: But you said it perfectly. I thought you said it perfectly.

Ryan: Okay. Well, I doubt everyone thinks that. The point I wanna make is that it’s not a coldness.

Selena: No.

Ryan: There’s still warmth. There’s still love. There’s still compassion. You care about your wife’s heart-

Selena: But you care enough to be able to step up and lead her out of whatever she might be in. But-

Ryan: My role in this exchange is not friend, it’s husband.

Selena: It’s not an emotional therapist.

Ryan: Right.

Selena: It’s not-

Ryan: And so I think maybe that’s what we’re pushing back against because… And that can materialize in all sorts of ways. I’m just gonna say it, it’s when a husband lacks a spine and conviction to be able to see right and wrong clearly.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: Now, we’re just assuming that every time a wife comes in and needs a friendship talk, it’s something bad. No. But I’m saying in those cases, if a husband lacks conviction, lacks a spine or he’s not built that rapport with his wife where she sees him in the ways that we’re describing, then it will devolve into a “Yes dear. Yes, dear. Hmm. That’s terrible dear.”

Selena: There it is.

Ryan: “It’s sad dear. How can I support you dear?”

Selena: It’s right.

Ryan: As opposed to “Let’s go to God with this together and let me protect you in this by covering you and leading you through this-

Selena: It’s so good.

Ryan: “…and working through it together,” again with all the warmth and all the love befitting godly man.

Selena: Which leads to kind of the next piece here is that a husband should be a defender of you, a protector of you and your family, a leader, a spiritual leader in the home. He’s not an aspiring clone of you. An example with this is when we’re parenting, I’m always like, “Oh, no, no, no. Do it like that.” Like, you see wives… I do this. I’m so guilty of it. Just, “No, babe, if you just do it like this or if you just give ’em this thing, or if you just do it like that, like if you just are like me, then you’ll succeed. I want you to succeed, but this is the only path for it.

Ryan: My thought is, I don’t always say this, but my thought is, you’ve been doing that all day. How’s that working for you? [both laughs] Right? Why don’t you try my way?

Selena: Right. So it’s like I need to let him lead. I need to just encourage him in that. I need to thank him for leading whenever he does lead and love well. And remember that God has given him to me as a defender, as a protector, as a provider, as a leader. That is His role.

Again, pushing back on this whole thing of like the shallow friendship of “Yes dear. Okay, yeah. I’m just emotional support partners. Like no, God has so much more I think for us as a married couple.

Ryan: Yeah. Because in a dynamic like that where a husband and wife are actually dialoguing as husband and wife, it’s as if the lights have been flipped on in the household, in the marriage. You talked about friendship being if the covenant is the house, friendship is the decor, if you will, or the making it a home, well, like this dialogue is the lights being flipped on.

Selena: Right. It’s good.

Ryan: Actually there’s some life there. It’s not just this where ships passing in the night and as long as you don’t step on each other’s toes things stake amicable. I know this is going to ruffle some feathers. Because it’s what we’re talking about. A wife having a friend and her husband. Okay, well here’s how I know it’s gonna ruffle feather. You flip the roles. It’s not the same.

The same people that say, You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Friendship is not… you’re straw-manning, blah, blah, blah, you’re not… Okay, well, let’s flip it. Oh, a husband who sees his wife as a friend. Tell me if you think this guy’s great, tell me if you think this guy’s awesome. I get home, “Hey, good to see you. Job’s done, plops down in front of the TV, turns on the video games, hangs out with his wife, his friend for three hours, zoned out in front of a TV, video, games, football, whatever. Treats her like a roommate. Best friend, by the way.

I can tell you what, I’ve lived with some friends and that’s pretty much what it’s like. There’s zero inquiry, there’s zero “How’s your soul?” I mean, there’s maybe a little bit of that, but there’s no sense that I’m caring for somebody I have been entrusted with. And so tell me if you think that guy’s a great guy or that that’s a good marriage. One side of this happens to have a lot more emotional… there’s a lot more emotional fuel to one side of it. That would be the wife confiding in her husband.

Selena: How do you?

Ryan: The other side of it is a lot more utilitarian. Like I told you, I loved you when I’m married you. I’ll tell you if something changes

Selena: Maybe on Sundays I’ll tell you too.

Ryan: How can I help in the economy of the home? You make dinner. Great. I’ll take the garbage out. Great. We’ll just keep this economy going, humming along the way it should. By the way, if you ask me not to play TV or play… play tv. If you ask me not to play video games so much, then you’ve overstepped. By the way, a wife has the right to ask that of her husband. The wife has the right to say, Husband, you are not leading, loving, attending to your family well, and the reason is football.

Selena: Let me help you. Let me help you see this.

Ryan: The reason is you’re workaholic. The reason is-

Selena: Let me help you see this, husband.

Ryan: That’s what we’re talking about talking. Because as a friend, you don’t get to tell me how much I watch TV.

Selena: There it is. Yes.

Ryan: Well, there are certain depths of friendship that you might have that, but as a friend-

Selena: You could say it and I might not-

Ryan: But as a wife-

Selena: There’s more authority there.

Ryan: When I see you as my wife and you come in and say, “Husband, this is something I wanna talk about. I’m concerned about this,” I’m head on a swivel. You’re my helper. You’re pointing out a blind spot. Ears are perked up. The Holy Spirit is using you. I am not a perfect man. I need correction in some ways-

Selena: Is this recording? This is on, right? I’m just kidding. [laughs]

Ryan: That for example. I’m just saying for-

Selena: For others out there.

Ryan: Theoretically.

Selena: Theoretically. If anybody needs to-

Ryan: Anyway. I think we kind of got down to the root of it.

Selena: Absolutely. Friendships… It’s like you said, it can feel tricky because you come in as a married couple, things are kind of baked in, but then you’re, you know… what is this idea of friendship like? And just, you know, it’s a tool. It can be used to bless one another.

I know that because of our friendships, some of the benefits or blessings we’ve seen is that we overcome conflict a lot faster. Like we have more to laugh about. We have more ways to kind of break the ice because we are friends. We’ve shared a lot of moments together, you know, fun times. They help us navigate and overcome conflict a little bit quicker.

Also, our friendship, I think has been the grease on the wheels to those awkward and hard conversations. Friendship just kind of cultivates this safety and familiarity which should hopefully equip you to have some of those awkward conversations, you know, about intimacy or, I don’t know, finances or some of your priorities, you know? Like you said, I think it’s the path that you step on, but I don’t think it’s the entire… Again, like you said, friendship only goes so far in a marriage. I think that it-

Ryan: I mean radicalized right now, by the way.

Selena: I think it opens the door. Are you not agreeing with me?

Ryan: No, I mean,

Selena: Because I think friendship opens the door to have hard conversations.

Ryan: I think “friendship” the wrong word.

Selena: Okay.

Ryan: The more I think about it is because you are my friend. Everything that a friend is you are, plus a thousand other things. So to me it’s like category you are not… but what you’re referring to in that the greasing, the skids, so to speak, is the idea that we have a rapport, we have a relationship. And that relationship is kind and loving to one another. That’s everything a good friendship is. But you’re not that. You know what I’m saying?

So I think friend is the wrong word. And I would hesitate to say it again in our marriage, because you’re my wife. And that includes all of the benefits of a friend. You’re a friend with benefits. [both laughs] So yeah. I think I probably wouldn’t use the word “friend” to describe you again as a-

Selena: We have a friendship, but we are married, like within our marriage.

Ryan: I still don’t like it. I get hung up on words because I feel like words have meaning and like… I just think you have everything that a friend would have, but then so much more. We are friendly to one another. That’s good. But it’s just different. I think of the timeless wisdom given by Ed Truck. Why can’t you friends be your friends, your workers be your workers, your wife be your wife. [both laughs]

Selena: That’s great. So dare we talk about four ways to cultivate your friendship in your marriage.

Ryan: I think just mincing words, but words matter. I think kind to cultivate your relationship, your affection toward one another. That’s what you’re getting at. How are you kind and loving and have fun with one another? Well, you have four ways here. Value the word of God together. We talked about that at the outset. I think it’s fitting to end it with that as well. That is the governing reality. We are playing from that sheet music, so to speak. That’s the first one. B we laughed just a second ago Ed Truck. That’s an Office reference by the way. Really obscure one, right?

Selena: Laugh often together.

Ryan: Laugh together.

Selena: And sometimes at each other, but not all the time. [laughs]

Ryan: And you know what, if you haven’t laughed in a while, be kind to one another, draw another end. Say, Hey, I miss this aspect of our relationship. Let’s laugh together. Let’s play a game. Let’s go see a funny movie, whatever. Right?

Selena: This one’s big for you. Connecting in the crowd. You know, I think it’s really easy to, get lost in your small group, get lost in church, vacations, adventures with other families, even daily life. I think we can just lose each other as husband and wife. So it’s good for us to connect.

What do I mean by getting lost? Well, we just kind of go our separate ways. We walk into small group, you go with the guys, I go with the gals. Kids go with kids. Like it all just kind of everybody dissipates. And so how can we stay connected and feel connected to one another? You know, things like eye contact. I love when he winks at me. It’s like nothing else warms my heart. A longer stare, not a weird stare, but like a little longer glancing at the eyes.

Ryan: A little weird is okay. [laughs]

Selena: Smiling at one another.

Selena: Physically, you know you could hold hands. Maybe a discreet honking [both laughs] here and there. If you know you know.

Ryan: I do not mind.

Selena: All the honking.

Ryan: Honking or being honked. [both laughs]

Selena: So those are a couple things you can do when you’re just, you know, outside being within your own family. And last… oh, go ahead.

Ryan: I don’t know if I should say this, but I’m going to… we have friends, you’ll know who I’m talking about. Where his superpower is mooning his wife without anyone else. I dunno how he does it. [laughs] You know who I’m talking about?

Selena: Nope.

Ryan: Oh, you’ll know when I tell you. But he’ll just… she’s like, He moons me every everywhere, and no one ever sees it. [laughs]

Selena: No one ever sees it. [both laughs] That’s kind of a talent I feel

Ryan: Yeah, it’s risky. It’s risky.

Selena: It’s risky business right there. So last one, make memories together. Go on adventures, try new things. But again, the key is to be intentional about connecting, having fun with one another, and diving into some conversations that you are being vulnerable about. That you are hearing one another and having an actual exchange rather than just Yeah, we went camping and we sat by the fire and played on our phones, read our books, and said nothing. It’s a whole different experience.

Ryan: Well, if you made it this far we hope part of this episode has blessed you.

Selena: If you’ve made it this far. Just so much faith in the episode.

Ryan: I see the stats. I know people drop off. [both laughs] It’s such as life. But if you’re still listening, we don’t want like to any these episodes without presenting the gospel. If you don’t know who Jesus is, the good news, the gospel is that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who came, lived a perfect life, died the sinner’s death so that we don’t have to. And He didn’t stay dead. He was resurrected on Easter morning. That’s what we celebrate on Easter. He was resurrected and He promises to resurrect everyone who is in Him, who’s placed their faith in Him unto new life, both spiritually and literally in the last days. So that is the good news. And all of us, because God is good, not because we are, that we are imperfect sinners, we need grace. And God has seen fit to solve that himself on the cross.

So we wanna invite you into that reality to place your faith in Christ. We recommend three things. First, find a friend who is a Christian. Say, tell me about Jesus. I wanna walk with Him. Start reading your Bible with them. Number two, find a church that preaches out of God’s word, that understands the power of the word, the authority of the word, and a pastor gives it to his sheep. Sit under a pastor like that. Hopefully, your friend has a pastor like that, you can start gonna church with them.

If you don’t have either of those things readily available, go to this website, thenewsisgood.com. There is a church finder there and there’s also some more information on what it means to place your faith in Christ.

Let’s pray. Lord, God, thank you for your, your word. Thank you for marriage. Thank you for friendship. Thank you for how covenant marriage is so huge. It’s so mighty. It’s so good. And it includes the goodness of friendship and even more. Lord, I pray to help us understand that. I pray that you would help us walk in our covenants faithfully.

I pray for the couples listening to this who are struggling, Lord. May this be hope in their ears, may they hear something in this that is inspired by you, that you might use it to draw them back to you, draw them to one another, that their marriage could again find health and could again find rest. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right, thank you for joining us for the Fierce Marriage Podcast. If you want to join the Fierce Fellowship, go to fiercemarriage.com/partner. That being said, this episode of the Fierce Marriage Podcast is—

Selena: In the can.

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

Selena: Stay fierce.