What 3 things really make a difference?
This week in the Dispatch:
5 Quick Hits
Learn ways to Grow Your Marriage in this YV plan
“What do you do when your teen wants to date?” in the AM Podcast
3 Difference Makers in Insights!
Challenges that put those difference makers into action
A Next Step that is yours to design
This Week’s Quick Hits:
“What we do in life echoes in eternity.” – Maximus, from Gladiator
Toto the dog was once a cow. In the original 1902 stage version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy did not have a dog but a faithful cow named Imogene.
The blob of toothpaste that sits on your toothbrush has a name. It's called a "nurdle," and there was a lawsuit over which toothpaste company had the right to depict it.
You might think jogging and running are basically the same thing, but according to conditioning coach Mike Antoniades, jogging means moving at "speeds less than 6 mph." Any faster than that, and it's technically running.
Finally, one trivia question: “In what year were the first Air Jordan sneakers released? (The answer is below Next Steps)
YouVersion Plan:
Growing Your Marriage - Part 1 by Dr. Kim
In this 4-day devotional, I will walk you through some practical things you can start doing today to grow and deepen your marriage. This plan will give practical tips as well as a better perspective on your marriage.
Podcasts:
The day my kids would start dating was not on my parenting agenda until they put it there! In this podcast Christina and I will tackle “When Your Teenager Begins to Date.” If you are in that stage now or will be in it someday, I think you will enjoy and learn from this podcast.
Insights
Yesterday I recorded an interview with my good friend, Greg Gunn. Greg leads a ministry called Family ID, which helps families develop their identity and live it out. In the video interview, Greg asked me, “When you are counseling a couple, what are the top three things you want them to do that will make a difference in their marriage?” With a question like that a number of things flood my mind. I thought of kindness, empathy, serving, listening, sex God’s way, resolving conflict, make and follow a budget, read the Bible together, pray together and be on the same team.
What would you say? What are the three things that you know make a difference in your marriage when you do them? For those that have been with me on the 10+ year journey of Awesome Marriage, what three do you think I finally landed on?
The first is probably not difficult for you to figure out since I talk often about the value of it. It’s the answer I gave my pastor when he asked me what I thought made the biggest difference in a marriage. Without a doubt, it’s praying together. Praying together is so simple but we seem to make it very difficult. Some of us are uncomfortable praying with someone else or even praying at all. We think we need to pray like our pastor or someone else that we think is a whole lot closer to God than we are. Honestly, I think the enemy throws all of those “reasons you shouldn’t” at us. The last thing he wants a married couple to do is pray together because he knows what that does for a marriage. It changes the husband, the wife, and the marriage.
Praying together is simple. It can be aloud or silent. You can hold hands or not. You can kneel, stand, lie down, stand on your heads, whatever. God just wants to hear from the two of you. Relationships trump everything else. Here is an example. Hold hands. Agree for one of you to pray out loud or to both pray silently at the same time. Then say something like, “God, help our marriage and help us to be the husband and the wife you created us to be. Thank you for caring for and loving us that much. Amen.” That five-second prayer will change your marriage.
Number two was being on the same team. Think about it this way. If you are on the same team, you are no longer fighting each other. You see everything that happens in your lives as something to tackle together. It’s “us” and “we” instead of a finger pointing “you.” We talk about God first and spouse second a lot. Sometimes I think I become too familiar with that. I say the words but pass over the depths of what that really means. If God is truly first in my life and I read His Word and seek Him in prayer, who else but Nancy would He have me put in second place behind Him? No one. That was His plan for marriage - for your marriage. When we embrace that truth, the only thing that really makes sense as we live out our marriage is to always be on the same team.
Number three. Actually, I am not going to tell you what I said for number three. I’m handing this off to you. Together as a team, decide your number three. What is the third biggest thing that makes a difference in your marriage? What connects you? What helps fulfill “the two become one” in your marriage?
That’s it. Pray together, be on the same team, and __________________ . Focus on these three and be intentional with them day after day after day and your goal of an Awesome Marriage will happen!
Challenge:
Commit to pray together every day for 30 days. Pray at whatever level the two of you are comfortable with. Remember there is not a right or wrong way. Just pray.
Talk about what it means to be a team. What part do each of you play? How do you help and encourage each other? Now, name your team!
Next Step:
Number three is yours. You decided together that it is important to your marriage. Talk about it. What gets in the way of this happening in your marriage? What can each of you do to be intentional about your part?
Trivia Answer: The first Air Jordans were released in 1984.
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