You may be able to tell from the name of the podcast episode that this podcast is about WHY we’ve created this podcast.
Pretty original, huh? 🙂
Listen to find out why we’re doing this, what we expect to publish each episode, and how we are praying God will use the podcast to help you live out a marriage that brings Him incredible glory.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE
We love marriage
As we share the reasons WHY we’re producing this podcast to help Christian couples with their marriages, we really have to start with this simple fact – we just love marriage.
Mindi’s been praying about her husband and her marriage since she was 14 years old… and I (Carey) am so grateful for that. I’m the recipient of her incredible vision for the blessing and power of a Jesus-centered marriage.
Together, we love marriage, mainly because of the blessing that it’s been in our lives. I can say for myself that marriage is the laboratory God has used to grow me up and to build me into more than I ever could have been otherwise. In marriage we’ve rubbed shoulders, butted heads sometimes, and in all of that the Lord has used the friction of having to work my flesh against Mindi’s flesh to bring about harmony. That’s a big part of what’s caused me to grow.
Mindi says that she discoverd her greatest insecurities flaring up in our marriage, especially the ones she didn’t even know existed. In a similar way, she sees that God used me to help her work through those.
It’s a beautiful thing. Marriage is… to be able to have the opportunity to work through those things with the person who’s closest to you.
If you’re listening and you’re not married yet, perhaps you’re engaged or thinking about getting married, we didn’t say any of that to scare you off. We just talk about life the way it really is. We want you to know that though marriage is full of joys (and they keep on coming), there’s also a painful and serious work to be done in making it what it should be.
We are teachers at heart
Another reason we’re publishing this podcas is that we love to pass on what we’ve learned and how it applies to life. Mindi especially is very good at seeing how the truth of Scripture applies to practical situations in life, in the conversations and relationships we have. So we want to bring that to the podcast.
And a huge part of that is that we want to communicate hope. God created marriage, and if He is in he center of it, He is going to make it a successful God-honoring marriage. It’s safe to say that there’s a lot of hopelessness going around regarding marriages, even in Christian marriages. And for good reason. The world is a broken place and relationships seem to suffer from that as much or more than anything else.
Just an example, we were recently spending time with a young couple who we had done premarital counseling with years back, and I (Carey) had the honor of marrying. What they said to us was sad. They said that we are the only example of a godly marriage to them. We don’t tell you that to toot our own horn, but to illustrate what a bleak environment it is in which to learn how to build a health marriage. It’s hard to find a good example these days.
Now, we know that’s not necessarily true for everyone out there and that there are many, many good Christian examples to emulate. But it’s tough to find them sometimes. All of you young couples, who are either engaged or newly married… you can learn to build a Christ-honoring marriage and be a hope for those who are watching YOUR marriage.
There’s a Kingdom purpose that also fuels this podcast
There’s also a reality that motivates us that isn’t quite as obvious, but is very real to us. We want to see Christian marriages thrive because when Christian marriages thrive, Christian homes thrive, when Christian homes thrive and Christian families thrive, the Christian church thrives. God Himself designed it that way.
If you go back through biblical history and pay attention to the building blocks of the created order, that’s what you find. Adam and Eve were… a family! That family was meant to fill, subdue, and bless the entire earth.
When sin entered the picture, God’s plan was to establish a nother family, through a guy named Abraham. One of the main plot-points of Abraham’s story is the fact that he couldnt’ have kids… he couldn’t start his family. But GOD did something about that in a mirculous way. He promised Abraham and his wife Sarah a son, from their own bodies (even though they were already old), and Isaac was born.
Isaac has a son named Jacob, who was later named Israel. He had 12 sons… who became the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel. We don’t often think of it this way, but when we read the story of the Old Testament Patricarchs, we’re reading the account of a family.
Now, Jesus has established His church as a family… as brothers and sisters in Him who are commissioned with spreading the good news that ANYONE can be adopted into His family. And according to the teaching we receive from the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 5, marriages are a HUGE part of that.
So… we want to see your Christian marriage thrive because when it does, it’s going to be a powerful tool in God’s hand for the advancement of His Kingdom purposes.
We’ve been praying about this for a long time
We also are doing this podcast because something like this has been on our hearts for a very long time. Not necissarily the idea of a podcast, but a marriage “something” — a book, a webinar, a podcast… something.
Because God has helped us in the daily, detailed arguments or decision-making or frustrations, or parenting or finances or health crises, we have had a joy-filled, delightful marriage from day one. Not without the ups and downs, of course, but iti’s been blessed and rich, nonetheless.
That’s what we want to pass on to you as you listen. We want you to see what He has done and what He can do, and have hope that it can be true for you as well.
What’s going to be DIFFERENT about this podcast?
A scripture-saturated marriage podcast
The day we recorded this episode, I (Carey) was looking in one of the podcast directories and found 60 or more podcasts on marriage. Some were secular, some Christian, even a Mormon marriage podcast.
It’s our hope that one of the first things you notice about our show that is different than all the others is that episode after episode, it’s saturated with scripture. We believe that any truth that we bring to you has got to be God’s truth and it’s got to be something we can demonstrate and prove from the scriptures before we feel good passing it on to you.
From there, we’ll make application through real life examples, situations, things we’ve been through, maybe counseling scenarios where we’ve counseled a couple and there was a circumstance similar to what we’re dealing with in the episode.
We strongly believe what the Bible says, that the Holy Spirit is our Counselor, and so we depend heavily on Him to counsel our hearts and to help us in our marriage and He has done that. So we are going to do our best to humbly and with integrity, pass that kind of biblical teaching on to you as you listen.
Assignments to make what you learn more helpful
Another thing we’re going to do, which is kind of an experiment, is that we’re going to try to provide you with episode specific assignments.
So if we talk about “Unity in marriage,” for example — which is the next episode that we’re going to record — we’re going to provide you some kind of a homework assignment to go along with what you learn during the reocrding. You’ll have the opportunity to follow the link in the description of each episode to find the show notes. There, you’ll find the assignment we mention in the audio, something like… “Go and practice this, ABC, whatever.”
The things you learn will become more tangible and real in your life as you PUT THEM INTO PRACTICE. We’re going to try to make it as practical as we can, and we’re going to give you resources to help you move forward in your marriage.
We’re excited for you to try the assignments because it’s an opportunity for you, as a couple, to be encouraged as you take the extra steps to learn about the things you are hearing, and you’ll actually feel encouraged because you’re applying it and you’re seeing God work in your life.
Scripture teaches us to meditate on God’s Word, to meditate on the truth. And what IS meditation? It’s focused thinking. It’s taking time to ponder the truth and let the Holy Spirit apply it to your life. And that’s hopefully what these assignments will help you to do as you move forward.
Why we named the podcast “You and Me and Jesus”
When we married, on May 20, 1989, Carey sang a song or two at the wedding, and one of them was entitled “You, Me, and Jesus” — originally sung and performed by Sir Cliff Richard.
There’s a line in the song that says, “When we look back years from now, we’re gonna’ owe it all to Him. You and me and Jesus, Jesus, me and you. On our own, we’d break, with Him we’ll make it through.”
On our 30th anniversary a few years ago, the power of that line came to our minds because we were seeing the reality of what it said. We WERE years later, looking back, and we DID see that every blessing and every benefit and every joy we’d experienced as a couple WERE owed to Jesus. And so, Mindi brought up the idea of us getting matching tattoos that expressed that. So we did.
Our oldest son said, “What have you done with my mother?” because Mindi was never into tattoos.
Now, we are 34 years married, and hopefully we have many more years to go. But we love what that song says. We are looking back and seeing God’s faithfulness in our life, in our marriage. And the beautiful thing about it is that God has been glorified, and He will continue to, be because of the relationship He’s given us in our marriage.
LISTENING SUGGESTIONS
LISTEN SEPARATELY then set a weekly appointment to discuss what you’ve heard, pray about what God may want YOU to adjust or implement, then plan how you will do so.
LISTEN TOGETHER: Set a standing weekly date to listen together, pray over what you’ve heard, discuss, and strategize how to implement relevant things into your relationship.
DO THE HOMEWORK: The more you invest, the more you’ll grow and experience God’s blessings!
