A daily devotional episode (day 49) from the Naked Marriage Podcast’s Summer of Scripture series. Hosts Dave Willis and a co-host discuss Ephesians 4:31–32, emphasizing removing bitterness, anger, harsh words, and slander in marriage and replacing them with kindness, tenderheartedness, and forgiveness; they apply the verse to modern marital communication and emotional management and urge listeners to trust God and give their best to their spouse. The episode previews day 50 in Philippians.
Chapters
Welcome to Summer of Scripture on the Naked marriage podcast. For 66 days in a row, we are releasing a daily devotional episode for your marriage. And over these 66 days, we're going to pull out one scripture from each of the 66 books of the Bible and talk about how it applies to your marriage. So if you listen to every single one of these episodes, you're going to have a comprehensive understanding of God's plan for your marriage. We encourage you to listen to everyone. Let's dive into today's scripture.
Hey there. Welcome back to the Summer of Scripture on the Naked Marriage Podcast. We are on day 49 in the book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 31 and 32. It says this. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God, through Christ, has forgiven you. And I just love this verse. We've quoted this many times in our talks, especially on communication, because in marriage, also in our walk as Christians, we, we need to do this right. We don't need to be bitter. We don't need to be full of anger. Definitely not saying harsh words or slandering our spouse or anybody else. And then, you know, just being kind and tender and, and obviously forgiving one another. We're gonna have to do that a lot. Like, there's gonna have to be a lot of forgiveness in marriage. And if you're newly married and you don't think so, I just, I hate to burst the bubble, but your spouse will let you down one day and you're going to let them down, too.
It will happen.
And you're going to have to forgive each other.
Yeah. Because you're human. It's going to happen. The book of Ephesians, Paul's writing to the church in Ephesus. Again, it was a pagan culture. They had a goddess there named Artemis. There were temples to her. There was a lot of sexual sin related to that cult religion and just broken views related to sex and family. And in the book of Ephesians, this letter to that church in Ephesus, Paul lays out very practical, just principles for marriage, for family, for how it's supposed to look God's way. This would be an incredibly practical, just Ephesians, chapter 5. Even just reading that one chapter, there's so much in there just for families. So check that out. Very practical for marriage. But this one verse we've chosen, I think in your marriage and all aspects of life, this could Be a life verse that just being kind, compassionate, tenderhearted. And it's sad to say these things have become countercultural. Right. Kindness seems to be disappearing. Compassion, tenderheartedness. I mean, you look online, people just like to fight with each other for sport. And I think that carries into our marriages. And we'll pick fights and we'll be sarcastic and we'll try to get one up on each other instead of humbly serving and encouraging and being tender hearted. You know, that word convicts me because that's a posture of the heart, not just the words we're saying, but. But what's behind those words, you know, let's be tender to each other, man.
And you just nailed it on the head in today's culture. And I have been guilty of, like, you know, the memes or the gifts where it shows somebody. Like, in the comments, it'll be people sharing that and it's somebody eating popcorn. Like, I'm just here for the comments. I've been that person where I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe these comments. Let me tell you, though, it's not fun being on the receiving end of that. And as people who've been online for a long time. Not fun. Okay? Not fun. And also, it's hard to get, like, nuances across in text through comments. You don't really know someone's body language or facial expressions or, like, the tone of their voice and what they're saying. And so then there's all this misunderstanding that happens because you're only seeing words on a page. And anyway, so yes, we need to actually have kind conversations face to face and just be really kind and think, like, if it's not kind. Okay? And here's something. Years ago, our friends, and I think they got this from somebody else, too. They said that they taught their kids to only say things that were true, kind, and necessary. And if they didn't have all three of those things, then you shouldn't say it. They said it could be true, but not be kind and necessary. So you don't need to say it. Or it could be necessary in your mind. Necessary.
But.
But if it's not true or kind, why would you say that? You know, and I. I think that's a wonderful filter for the words that we choose to say, even to our spouse, because I think that we think that, like, the gloves are off when it comes to our spouse. But really, I mean, we need to be even more tender with our spouse.
We should be most. Yeah, most tender with our spouse again. And this is a theme we've come back to, like, give the best of yourself to your spouse, not your leftovers. Don't give the best of yourself to everybody else out in the world and then come home and dump your leftovers on your spouse. Because what relationship could thrive with that? You know, your treasure is. Where your heart is, there your treasure will be. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So whatever you're giving the most valuable part of yourself to, you know, that's where your treasure's gonna be. So make your spouse your treasure.
And I'll just say this, too. It talks about getting rid of bitterness and rage. I don't know if you've ever had a season where you've had prolonged bitterness and rage or known someone who's had prolonged bitterness and rage. But rarely do we make good decisions when we are dealing with those emotions. Like, those aren't meant to stay, you know, and they're not. We're not meant to hold onto that. That's something you gotta leave at the foot of the cross and say, lord help me. Cause sometimes it's hard to fight that off. Like, especially if you have a very strong sense of justice. It can be so easy to be like, they wronged me, and they're not getting the. Pay the, you know, the consequences, I think they should get. And it just makes you feel enraged. And you even tell yourself, and it might be like a righteous anger, but anger turning to rage, which is like. Like you're. You're like. It's like you have a match, okay, or you have a candle and there's this fire burning, and that's your anger. But then rage is like, you want to spread it around. You know, you're like, make it. Make it. Have a fire everywhere. I want everybody to pay because this. This isn't happening how I wanted it to. And, you know, it seems all kind of fun and games on TV and played out in these. These things where nobody's really getting hurt. But in real life, there. There is, like, real lasting consequences. I mean, you think about incidents of road rage.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, people die or they go to jail or they, you know, inflict pain on somebody else over just them cutting them off in traffic, sometimes even unknowingly. You know, I mean, you have these fights at school with teens, you know, getting enraged over different things. And. Or you see school shootings where there's been, like, this base level rage that a teenager has been fighting inside of them. And then all of a sudden it becomes like, A full on attack on this whole school. I mean, so we don't need to enter, we don't need to feed the rage. Right? We need to, we need to be like on the fires that we have going inside of us when it comes to anger and rage and bitterness. And we have to bring that to the Lord because in our own human strength, we cannot get rid of that. Like everything in us says we need to get even. We need to get even. Somebody has to pay. Like, especially for those of us, again who have a strong sense of justice. But we need to let God handle that. Like, God is, God's the judge, not us. I mean, thank God. I don't want even that pressure in my life. And we don't see all the different sides of everything, but we gotta bring it to God and say, lord, help me to not let this eat away at me. Cause that's really what it does. Rage and bitterness takes from us. It sucks the life out of us.
Right, of course, yeah. We're the prisoner.
Right? We're the prisoner.
We think we're punishing somebody else, but it really just punishes us. And so when we forgive, when we let go of that, it's not just for the other person's benefit, it's to free us. God wants us to be free.
Exactly.
So live in freedom.
Live in freedom and also be willing to forgive. Like, be willing to forgive because we first were forgiven by God and we have every reason. I mean, even if we feel like, oh gosh, I just don't want to let go. Just know that God is a just God. Like he is a just God. Things have a way of like God in the way that he created the whole universe. There is order. So just know that, you know, doing the right thing, being willing to forgive, even when you don't know if that person's going to have earthly consequences. God is a just God, okay?
He's going to work it out.
You have to trust that he's going to work it out.
Trust him.
Yeah.
It's one of the simplest messages of the Bible. Trust God. He's going to work it out.
Yeah.
Great word today guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. Join us tomorrow. Day 50. It's hard to believe we're to day 50. We'll be in the book of Philippians, which is often referred to as the most joyful book in the Bible, even though it was written for from a prison cell. So tune in tomorrow, we'll see you.
