• Referenced scripture:
  • Genesis 3:9

• Recommended resource:
  • thenewsisgood.com

Ryan: You know, folks, we’re not really about those marriage hacks here in the Fierce Families, Fierce Marriage space, but, however, we have a hack for you today. [both laughs]

Selena: Not about him, but when we do have one. We’ll share it.

Ryan: We’re going to hack it up. And I think it will be helpful to you. It has to do with communication and maybe something that you might not have thought of. We’re going to make you think about it. So we’ll see you on the other side.

[00:00:26]

Selena: Man, oh, man, it’s been a hot second since we… Did we record? This is our first recording of 2024.

Ryan: I don’t know if that’s the truth. [both laughs]

Selena: Feels right. It’s only January like 11th.

Ryan: I guess. Maybe. Yeah. We did some-

Selena: You released a-

Ryan: …a short trip with some friends.

Selena: Yeah, to the snow, to play in the snow, but you released the Fierce Families Conference talks, which is awesome.

Ryan: Yes. Which was the one that I gave. That was last week’s podcast episode. I hope that was helpful to you, our lovely listeners. But all those episodes are available. You can find those… the easiest way, go to fiercefamilies.com. There’s a button at the top. It’ll take you to the archive page. Or, this helps us, search for Fierce Families in whatever podcast app you’re using. While you’re at it, go ahead and leave us a blind review. Five stars on that one. That’s just going to be where we keep all the Fierce Families Conference content as it comes out.

Selena: Are you going to have it on YouTube also?

Ryan: It is on YouTube. We’re working on the playlist and thumbnails and all that for those. So you can search for it there, too. But Lord willing, we’ll have more Fierce Families Conferences. We’ll put that content in that little slot there for the time being.

So if you don’t know who we are, my name is Ryan, this is my lovely wife, Selena. This is the fierce marriage podcast. So it’s great to have you. Selena, what is your ultimate marriage hack? Give it to us.

Selena: Thank you for displaying and modeling it right there. Today we are talking about asking good questions. Being good at asking good questions.

Ryan: Be good at asking good… ask good, great questions. Good, great food. That’s the motto of our favorite restaurants. Great, good food. That’s what it is. Never mind.

Selena: So getting good at asking good questions. So what is a good question? Are you actually good at asking them? How would you know if you’re good or not? Right?

Ryan: And what’s the purpose of a question? Now, I’m going to go a little bit deeper here. Who are we as question-asking people?

Selena: Who are we?

Ryan: And I contend our ability and need and desire to ask questions is not just an… it’s rooted in the very character of God. Are you with me?

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: I wrote about this in the book, How a Husband Speaks. Selena, did put it in How a Wife Speaks. These are the latest books that we’ve written. We’re always working on new stuff, but these are the latest ones that were released. Check those out. Go to fiercemarriage.com/speak. But anyway, I wrote about it in this book. It’s a later chapter in the book. So I feel okay going through the content here. Plus, we wanted to bless as many people as possible.

The chapter is called The Quest and the Query. So what I’m doing is I’m helping, urging, imploring even husbands to become good question-askers as a means to being better communicators, and from a larger perspective, as a means of creating a communication culture in the home that asks good questions.

The thinking behind it is there’s a lot of practical benefits to asking good questions, and we’re going to go through those in just a second. But it’s really rooted in who we are as people made in the image of God. That we have a question asking God. Now, that might sound counterintuitive.

Selena: Right. He’s not asking questions to get knowledge. He’s not genuinely asking the question for Himself. He’s asking it for His creation, for us.

Ryan: He’s doing it for our edification, to draw us out of maybe the dark places we find ourselves in. And I’ll give it scriptural examples if you think I’m being weird. But it’s never because He doesn’t know or because He’s curious. But He asks questions nonetheless.

Real quick, what are the roles of asking questions in marriage and how can we just keep those in view as we’re going through, very quickly, this chapter? The first one, obviously, and especially in the early stages of your relationship, you ask questions because you want to learn stuff about each other. You want to grow in your knowledge of one another, like I said, particularly in the early stages. What else do questions accomplish?

Selena: Understanding and reconciliation. So understanding and reconciliation.

Ryan: Right. So if you’re having a conflict, which we’ve only had like one of those-

Selena: This guy.

Ryan: This guy. No. But if you’re having a conflict, it really helps instead of just firing shots, trying to get your two cents, in instead, pause, ask a question to gain understanding.

Selena: And I also think it can be disarming to ask questions. Clearly, you have to be sincerely wanting to know the answer. But instead of thinking of how you’re going to defend your own answer or your own self, taking that next step of saying, Okay, I need to try to understand my husband right now. So I don’t know… You know, just thinking through those questions of how you can gain the understanding and not just sit on your anger horse and gallop off over your husband. [laughs]

Ryan: Selena’s favorite question is, how dare you?

[The Office lips starts]

Ryan: Do you have a question, Kelly?

Kelly: Yeah, I have a lot of questions. Number one: How dare you?

[The Office lips ends]

Ryan: So that’s number one, number two. Number three is questions help us care for each other and comfort one another. So if you’re grieving or you’re confused about something or you’re dealing with, you know, a hardship, asking question is, you know, of course-

Selena: How can I help you? How can I care for you right now? Or how are you feeling? I think-

Ryan: Why do you think you feel the way you feel or what’s…? You know, just digging, helping you get down to the bottom of it. Because so many times we just get flooded by our own emotions. Especially if it’s a trauma of some sort, asking questions can help you care for one another.

Another way, another reason questions are useful is they help you to process things you don’t understand, like things through life, faith questions. If I’ve learned anything in the past three years, Okay, this is 2024 now, so I’ll say the past four years, everyone has changed in the last four years because of the cultural upheaval that we’ve all been through. The COVID stuff, all the political stuff, we’ve all been through that together. We’ve co-traveled and especially you and your spouse. Well, there’s a lot of stuff that you probably don’t understand. You need to process that stuff. Questions help with that. Questions are fun. A lot of times when we’re driving, I’ll think of questions to ask you.

Selena: You do think of funny questions. I don’t always give the funniest and best answers, I think.

Ryan: Well, I always catch you off guard. I’ll be thinking about, what are my five favorite movies in my head, because I’m like, I want to tell Selena what these movies are. And I’m like, Selena, what are your five favorite movies?

Selena: He projects his questions like he just wants me to ask him, because I’m like, well, I need to think about it for a little while. And he’s like, Okay, while you’re thinking, A, B, C, D, E. One, two, three, four, five. Here’s mine. Top five.”

Ryan: Oftentimes, I will ask you-

Selena: What I would take on a deserted island. [both laughs]

Ryan: What is it? A medical almanac or whatever. No, I’ll ask you then I’ll wait for you to ask. And I’ll just kind of like keep driving, and then you’ll be like, “I’m hungry. You want to get some food?” And you won’t ask me the question.

Selena: I have to make it a more conscious effort to ask questions because I’m just that self-centered and selfish.

Ryan: This whole episode is just me trying to get my wife to ask me some questions.

Selena: The Lord is working on my heart. Ryan, how are you really feeling? And the last thing that questions can do in your marriage is they can continue growth and build I think you want to say intimacy or closeness, right?

Ryan: Yeah.

Selena: So you change. You don’t stay the same. God is constantly changing and growing you. So you can have the same questions every year. You could do it once a year and ask some of the same questions and have different answers.

Ryan: Yeah. So these are all good, pragmatic reasons for asking questions. And going back to what I said at the beginning that I believe asking questions is unique to us because of us being made in the very image of God. Now there’s no other creature that asks questions. And I talk about this in the book. But I mean, anyone who has kids knows as soon as that kid can not even speak, but can begin to-

Selena: Communicate.

Ryan: …communicate in any way, they’re inquiring of you. They’re expressing desire. They’re expressing curiosity. They are expressing interest in things, usually in the form of questions or, you know-

Selena: Demands.

Ryan: …murmurings or demands. But no other animal will do that. Even the scientists spent all these years with apes trying to train them and track whether or not they’re asking questions and they couldn’t get one question out of them. No sense of inquiry.

[crosstalk 00:09:25]

Selena: Like personal inquiry.

Ryan: I’m talking about like, yeah, any sort of trying to find out information that’s unique to human beings.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: And here’s the verse I want to talk about here as we unpack that idea. That so much of communicating is taking a step back and seeing communication as a grace of God and a miracle. And the fact that I can extend, you know, I can use my vocal cords, I can use my mind, I can organize my thoughts, I can use language and the meaning attached to that language to then ask you another person living in this universe that God has created, and I can inquire of you and you can then do the same thing and reveal knowledge that I would otherwise not know about you.

Selena: Yeah.

Ryan: It’s utterly a miracle. And that is a grace of God.

Selena: It is. And I think most of our books, at least mine is about, you’re like, yes, I gather the thoughts and then I put them together and then I communicate them. I’m like, well, I don’t even know how to gather thoughts sometimes. [laughs] How do I even communicate about like…? It takes such an effort. But anyways, that’s a side note. Those books will help.

Ryan: So look at Genesis 3:9. It says this. You want to read that, Sel?

Selena: “But the Lord called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you’?

Ryan: It’s a short passage for today.

Selena: It’s good.

Ryan: God’s asking a question.

Selena: It doesn’t have to be long.

Ryan: Did God know where Adam was? Was He wondering?

Selena: Did God lose Adam? [both laughs] Obviously not.

Ryan: If you don’t recall, Genesis 3 is where the fall capital F Fall happened. That’s the fall of man. Adam and Eve sinned for the first time and humankind fell. Now, we are under Adam’s headship. He’s the first Adam. Then Christ is the second Adam. So there’s some theology to impact there. But because of Adam and Eve, we also are fallen. So there’s direct parallels obviously between what’s happening here and what happens with us.

Now, they fell, they felt their shame, they knew they were naked and so they were ashamed and they cobbled together some fig leaves and whatnot like you see in the storybooks and because they felt naked. And they went and they heard God in the garden and they hid. And what did God say? He didn’t say, “Come out. I know you’re there. I know what you did. I saw you.”

Selena: It was not a game of Marco Polo.

Ryan: He didn’t just start saying, “and the sentence shall be death,” and here’s how you’re going to live out.” He didn’t do any of that. What did He say? “Where are you?” Now why did He do that? Because He wasn’t trying to find them. He was drawing them out already. God is going about the business of reconciling Adam and Eve to Him immediately. And the question is the way He began that dialogue.

So there’s power to be had there that we have a questioning God and that He’s hardwired humanity with our ability to ask questions. So I wanted to draw our attention to that. There’s more to be unpacked there. We’ll talk about that at length in the book even more. So I just want to just really quickly read the last part of that section to put a cap on that section. And we’ll get into more practical things.

Here’s what it says. “God was reaching out to His beloved people with an invitation. He was inviting them toward repentance and reconciliation. That’s why God’s first question is so profound. Instead of a cold pronouncement of the curse, which God would have been 100% justified in doing, we get a preemptive look at his graceful pursuit of mankind. God does ask questions of his creation, but His questions are of a rhetorical quality that points to His underlying reason to unambiguously display His holiness, grace, and love. This reveals much about God’s character, but it also demonstrates what questions can do. Questions are uniquely powerful, and God has embedded in your very DNA the remarkable capacity to ask. Will you wisely wield the power to ask carefully crafted questions? I believe you can, because I’m sure you already have.”

So then in the book, we’ll do it here. We jump off into in what ways that we ask questions of one another in the past. And by reflecting on that, bring it back to the surface in terms of our communication culture now.

Selena: I guess I think like, you know, you say, will you wisely wield the power? Also, I think further in this chapter you talked about… we have certain questions at the beginning of our relationship, you know, very curious, you want to get to know one another. But then as your relationship progresses, they become less sort of like gaining knowledge. And now we want understanding of one another, right, understanding of each other’s hearts.

So it’s not necessarily, like you say, Twitter-pitted curiosity. So sometimes it can feel, I think, more like a drudge to think of the right questions and actually build, grow in your craft, grow in your ability to ask questions. Again, not for the purpose of just questioning all the time, but to really get at the heart or the root, the sole issue of what’s happening within your spouse and within your marriage.

Ryan: So early on in your relationship, think back… I’ll go back to our early dating relationship filled with questions. What do you think about this? What do you think about this? You know-

Selena: I still ask you what you think about things because I just trust your-

Ryan: What’s your favorite this? What have you experienced? I want to understand.

Selena: I want to know you.

Ryan: I want to know you. So the temptation is you get to a certain critical mass of, Oh, I know Selena enough or I know my spouse enough. And you stop finding the question that… yeah, you just said it, but they’re not as intuitive. You have to-

Selena: And we get into the dangerous ground of assuming that we already know the answers because of how they’ve acted in the past or whatever, instead of maybe in a particular moment, giving them the grace to answer the question and giving them the grace to just by you even asking the question, right?

Ryan: Yeah. So that familiarity sets in and so you start answering questions you never asked for them. They answered the question in your head and they were not a part of it.

Selena: This happens all the time in my head.

Ryan: Now, think about the difference between an orientation, like in terms of your attitude orientation between one who assumes they know and one who asks the question who doesn’t assume they know. Now, there’s a humility already. And I think that when you say questions disarm, I think that’s why. Because when someone’s coming at you in a conflict, they’re coming at you and instead of meeting that, it’s like the old Steven Seagal, like Aikido move where you kind of move back with them and you ask a question instead. And so they’re caught off guard. Now all of a sudden, their weapons are-

Selena: Right. Their momentum is just done.

Ryan: Their knives have lost their edge. And now we’re not crossing swords now, but instead, we’re actually dialoguing.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So the point I’m trying to make without getting too far into the conflict aspect of question asking is that the whole reason we ask questions is to gain knowledge and the whole attitude that goes into wanting to gain knowledge is one that is humble.

Selena: Right. Well, and I think questions just lend themselves so beautifully to the conflict situation. What are the five things that we talk about in Fierce Marriage? It’s like asking questions about, you know, your communication, about your intimate life, about your finances, about your priorities, about your… forgot the last one.

Ryan: More conflict.

Selena: Conflict. Probably conflict. But questions lend themselves obviously to all of these particular pillars in marriage. But how do you ask a good question? What makes a good question? Because I feel like sometimes I ask you peripheral question. I’m not great at always getting to the heart of things. I feel like you’re really good at getting to the heart of the matter, probably all too quickly sometimes. And I’d be like, can you just like care about me out here a little bit about like why I might be mopey or why my back hurts or something and not just be like, well, you did this. So, well, I think I’m more… maybe that’s me.

Ryan: I’m kind of worried about the snow going over the past, and I’ll say, that is a godless perspective.

Selena: Okay. So-

Ryan: Get behind me, Satan.

Selena: Here’s where we have to go, right?

Ryan: That’s funny. So yeah, you know-

Selena: What makes a good question?

Ryan: What makes a good question? I think the context matters. We just illustrated that laughingly here. You know, you need to be able to read like what’s the purpose of the questions you’re asking. Now a good question, I’ll say accomplishes that purpose. Now you need to be wise to find the questions that will accomplish the purpose you’re setting out to do.

So if I want to have a good time with you and laugh with you and questions are the means by which I’m going about that, right? We’re not just going to turn on The Office or watch, but instead, we’re going to communicate and build some more things that we can start joking about. Then I’m going to find questions that are going to be interesting.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: They’re going to be funny to think through. These days with kids being the ages that they are, frankly, mental energy-

Selena: Nobody got time for questions, okay?

Ryan: Mental energy is pretty rare to come.

Selena: Plus they ask each like a thousand questions a day. Well, Sunny doesn’t.

Ryan: If you’re in the young kid season-

Selena: 3,000 questions at least a day. I’m just going to tell you.

Ryan: And 1,000 of them are the same question three times. [both laughs]

Selena: We love our children. They’re so funny.

Ryan: But in the book we go a little bit further than that. Actually, there’s a chart there and I didn’t paste over, so I’m going to pull the book really fast. There’s a chart and it’s a pyramid. The tip of the pyramid is, is I would say the easiest or the low-hanging-

Selena: Low-hanging fruit.

Ryan: Low-hanging fruit. So questions that are all about gaining facts. What time are you going to be home? What’s the weather like? I’m gathering information. All right. Those are the easiest.

Selena: You don’t like those questions when I ask you those. [laughs] We want to get to the heart.

Ryan: Well, I’m information on demand sort of guy. You’ll be like, “Hey, just so you know, next month I’m going to do this appointment and I’m going to need you to do this. I need you to feed the dog next February 15th because I’m going to be at a doctor’s appointment at 7 a.m.” It’s like, tell me that the morning before.

Selena: The day before. The morning of. And I’m like, “But I can’t remember all those things. I need you to remember these things.”

Ryan: So that’s facts. So the second layer down again, going down this pyramid, there’s four layers is so you have facts. The second layer down is thoughts. So what is your intellectual assessment of the facts? Like what conclusions do you draw from the fact that you have to go to the doctor at 7 a.m or that I have to feed the dog that morning? What are the conclusions? And you might be able to synthesize a conclusion and talk about what are your thoughts on a certain state of facts, you know-

Selena: Or it just begets more questions.

Ryan: Right. I love it. That’s when you start cooking with fish grease, as they say.

Selena: Who is they?

Ryan: My Greek professor says that. The next one, the next layer of inquiry. So facts, thoughts. Now you get into emotions. So let’s put some teeth to this. We’re heading into an election year. Great. It’s going to be awesome. What’s the worst?

Selena: Said no one.

Ryan: And so, you know, you start seeing all the political mess that’s unfolding and you gather it, gather facts about certain candidates, about certain things they’re saying about the state of the union and what’s happening in our country. These are the facts. Okay. Well, what do you think about those facts? You know, the immigration stuff and the COVID stuff and the critical race theory stuff and the LGBTQ elemental piece stuff. What do you think about all these facts? Well, I think, just lay out your thoughts. I think our nation needs Christ is what I think. So now the next layer, why do you feel about that? Are you worried? Or are you afraid? Are you optimistic? Why?

Selena: Why?

Ryan: Okay. So we’re getting deeper now. Facts, thoughts, emotions. Now what’s fueling those emotions is going to be directly related to the fourth layer of inquiry, which is beliefs. Why are you afraid? Do you believe Christ is Lord?

Selena: Well, and see, I need you to go through those with me sometimes because when you go straight to something else, it can feel condescending or it can feel like I’m dismissed or small, but you’ve been better about “we have to let each other know”. Right?

Ryan: Yeah.

Selena: And you’ve been better about that because you’re like, yes, this is what I said from the beginning. I was like, great. You can say that and I’ll see it but why can’t I go on the journey of understanding? And you’re like, just trust me and I’ll, and believe it. And I’m like, I do, but… It’s the whole “but”.

Ryan: Well, that’s the thing is we are humans. We need to be brought. You need to be read into the things that we’re saying and understand. So now when you get to that level in your marriage and you start talking, you’re not just talking about the political facts. You’re not just talking about the thoughts on those political facts. Most people don’t get past layers one and two. But instead you get into the, how’s that make you feel? Because a lot of times what’s happening is your information, like the thoughts that you’re sharing are fueled by what you feel and you don’t even know what you feel or why you feel it.

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So Selena will come to me and share a piece of information that you’ve gotten from Instagram or somewhere and you’ll share the information with me and your thoughts on the information. And I’m always asking, well, okay, so, why are you sharing this with me? Not because I don’t want to hear it. Not because I want to talk to you, but why is this something that you clearly are thinking about? Well, because either there’s some level of fear, there’s some level of excitement, or some level of-

Selena: Frustration.

Ryan: …emotion underneath it. And then that’s where the good spouse conversations come in and says, well, okay, why do we feel that way? There’s a lot of, I think, understandable reason to be afraid in our current political whatever-

Selena: Day and age.

Ryan: Yeah, global economic day and age. But our lot as Christians is not fear. So if we just stop at fear and we don’t go down and ask the questions to get down to belief, then we are missing an opportunity to disciple one another, to lean into the truths of Christ more, to love our Savior more, to trust Him more, to let God be God more if that’s even possible. He’s God, whether we… we don’t let God be God. He just is now. But when we acknowledge His Lordship over all creation, we are glorifying Him as what we are designed to do. You see how the questions got us there?

Like we don’t automatically get there until we start asking, peeling these layers back, asking the questions. I mean, you can start to see how this would apply to your intimate life.

Selena: “Here’s the facts.

Ryan: Facts.

Selena: We maybe have sex once a month.

Ryan: And I could take that fact and throw it in your face.

Selena: Right. Well, then we assess that, right?

Ryan: Or I could say, “We only have sex once a month and that’s terrible.” There’s my thoughts and it makes me feel unloved.

Selena: Thoughts, emotions.

Ryan: “And I believe now you don’t love me.”

Selena: Right.

Ryan: So, okay. Is the belief true? Well, I do love you. Your emotions: you feel unloved. I’m sorry you feel unloved. I don’t want that. I want you to feel loved.

Selena: How can we…

Ryan: Is it bad that we’ve only been intimate once in a month? Okay. Yeah. I think I can agree that that thought is correct. I mean, we’re getting back to that top layer. So the facts are not good then. So now not only have we uncovered these things that we’re feeling, but we can start to see where that process is showing us how the facts need to change and now we can act based on this conversation.

Selena: Why aren’t we having sex more than once a month? Well, I haven’t felt close to you or I haven’t felt emotionally safe with you. I haven’t felt physically like attracted to you. Or are those even, you know…

Ryan: Let me just put this out there. Or husband, you haven’t initiated and I’m not saying…

Selena: Husband hasn’t initiated?

Ryan: Yeah. I think sometimes husbands feel like they can’t initiate.

Selena: Okay. Sure.

Ryan: And I think it’s my view that husbands should be the primary initiators in sex.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: And I think that’s good. And sometimes the lack of sex in a marriage is because the husband has failed to initiate for whatever reason. We can talk about that any other time.

Selena: You think there’s a right way to initiate, right? Or…

Ryan: Of course. But if we start understanding that that’s the aim, we’re unpacking, we’re opening a can of worms here.

Selena: I know. I shouldn’t have gone down the intimacy route.

Ryan: No, no, no. It’s fine. I just want to encourage husbands to initiate. And if your wife’s not comfortable with you initiating, talk about her so that she understands that you want to be the initiator. I’ll leave it there. Ask questions. But this could go through anything. And I think it might be helpful to do a few here. So money. I feel like we’re not meeting our goals financially. Financial goals. And my thoughts are…

Selena: Here’s the facts. We are in the red the last two months, three months-

Ryan: We’re overspending in these, whatever budget categories.

Selena: Here’s my thoughts.

Ryan: And my thoughts are that, you know, that’s bad, it’s going to set us up for future hardship. We’re not saving. We’re not, you know, all that sort of stuff. And because of that, I’m frustrated and because I believe that you don’t care about that and you’re not on the same page as me.

Selena: You’re not making choices day to day that would reflect that you care about this in your spending, in our spending.

Ryan: Okay. Now, I’m just sharing without asking questions, but now think in terms of asking those sorts of questions.

Selena: So are you saying like start at the fact level while we answer that?

Ryan: Yeah.

Selena: What would make you think that? Well, our checkbook reflects this. Okay. Why are these your thoughts on it?

Ryan: Yeah. And just keep going. And you’ll start to unearth things and keep asking questions about the things you’re unearthing. So clearly you’re nervous. You’re afraid. Why are you feel afraid? I feel afraid-

Selena: Or you’re frustrated.

Ryan: I’m frustrated because… and what’s our belief underneath that will get down to the bottom of it. And it’s always as a Christians. we’re a Christian marriage podcast. It’s always going to come back down to the Lordship of Christ and somehow understanding or not understanding that.

Selena: And your beliefs.

Ryan: So there are lots more questions. We’ve gone somewhat, I think, what’s the word? Maybe more heady on some of these things. Now there are some fun questions that you can ask one another and maybe we’ll just share a link to that.

Selena: I didn’t vet all these questions. It’s from a website called the Adventure Challenge. I saw a few that I thought were interesting.

Selena: I went through a few of them.

Ryan: I went through a few.

Selena: They’re pretty fun.

Ryan: We don’t have time here to do those. But I do want to share this grid, the mediocrity versus mastery grid. On this part of the how a husband speaks, how a wife speaks books, they’re in every chapter.

Selena: They’re at the end of every chapter. And they basically are comparing and contrasting, you know, how you might respond without Christ, without God at work in your heart, or how you will respond with self-control, with the fruit of the spirit, like your mediocre response, your master response.

Ryan: Yeah, Because each one of these, it’s a skill.

Selena: It’s clarifying.

Ryan: You can gain a skill.

Selena: You can build-

Ryan: And so you can either be a mediocre question asker, or you can be a masterful question asker. All right. So I’ll do the mediocre ones. Selena will share the mastery ones. It’s very suiting.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: All right. Mediocrity. A mediocre question-asker allows familiarity to lead to complacency.

Selena: A masterful question-asker recognizes the need to continue pursuing one another in marriage.

Ryan: Mediocrity is minimally curious about his wife or her husband.

Selena: He sees wife as dynamic and growing, which drives curiosity.

Ryan: Pause. Isn’t that great?

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: It occurs to me with every child we’ve had, with every year that we’ve been married, I love watching you become more woman.

Selena: So great. Because I just feel like this not strong, mess sometimes.

Ryan: The glories of your womanhood are something to behold.

Selena: Glories. Thank you. And you helped me see that.

Ryan: And I love it. But no recognizing that and then letting that influence how you’re thinking and asking questions I think is awesome. All right. So a mediocre question asker, this is the last one, asks mostly surface-level questions to gather information, whereas-

Selena: The masterful question asker asks questions as a means of gaining connection, insight, and growth. Amen.

Ryan: All right. So here’s some stuff to leave you thinking. And then we will sign off for the week. Here it is. Application questions for you and your husband and or wife. Go home, ask these questions or talk about these with them. How can you lead your bride for husbands or… this is for the husband. So I’ll leave it here because I think husbands should lead this charge. How can you lead your bride with greater, more selfless love through the ways you inquire, the ways you ask questions? Remember that good questions do far more than reveal new information. That’s the application question.

And here’s another one. I lied. It was two of these. What is at stake if you don’t learn to ask a good, thoughtful questions of your spouse? What is at stake? Think about that. Write it down. What if I’d stop asking you thoughtful questions? Are we going to naturally drift closer together?

Selena: No.

Ryan: No. Is our intimacy going to get better?

Selena: No.

Ryan: Are we going to be more unified around our finances?

Selena: No.

Ryan: Is our communication going to be better and stronger?

Selena: No.

Ryan: Is our conflict going to just resolve itself? Our priorities are going to drift. We’re going to drift.

Selena: We’re going to start assuming, there’s going to be lots of conflict and we won’t resolve it and… yeah.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, there you have it. The marriage hack of the century: Asking questions of your spouse.

If you don’t know who Jesus is, we want you to know the person, the work, the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The best way we can come up with for you to do that is to find a friend who you know is a Christian and say, friend, tell me about Jesus. Can you read this Bible with me? I guarantee you if they are Christians, they will be glad to do that with you.

If you can, number two, find a church that preaches out of the Bible and go there and get to know the pastor and ask him to show you who Jesus is.

And number three, if you have a hard time with either of those first two things, go to this website. It might help you. It’s thenewsisgood.com.

Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we love You. We worship You. Thank You for the gift of question-asking. Thank You that You’ve made us in Your image and you’ve given us the ability to inquire, to gain information. You’ve given us the gift of communication. Lord, help us to do it wisely. Help us to be good at it. Help us to be good question askers, that we might love You, love each other, and glorify You with our marriages. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right. I didn’t say anything, but if you want to partner with us, that is a bit significant piece to the Frederick home economy. Thank you if you are a Fierce Fellowship member. That’s our Patreon community. If you want to check that out, there’s some stuff that we give to our patrons. We give books and rings and all this stuff. I’m about to update those tiers because we need to go in and give them an update. So go to fiercemarriage.com/partner if you want to join hands with us, join arms with us. Join hands, that’s a little awkward.

Selena: Arms.

Ryan: Arms. But if not, no worries. We will be here at Lord willing next week to do this because, man, what a gift it is to do the podcast with you.

Selena: Amen.

Ryan: All right. So this episode of Fierce Marriage is—

Selena: In the can.

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

Selena: Stay fierce.