How Can we Grow In Our Faith // Hump Day Q&A

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You know what time it is, sweetie?

It's Hump Day Q and A time.

Hump Day Q and A Hump Day Q and A welcome to the Naked Marriage Podcast. Hump Day Q and A. We love answering your questions, so every Wednesday we're dropping a special podcast episode focused on one of your questions. You can submit your own marriage related question online@nakedmarriagepodcast.com or by sending us a message on Instagram aveandashleywillis. We've got a great question today, so let's dive in. Hey friends, welcome back to Hump Day Q and A on the Naked Marriage Podcast. We're Dave and Ashley Willis. So glad you guys are here. Before we jump into today's question, wanted to let you know that our Exo Marriage Conference fall and spring tour dates are up and available for tickets. We would love to see you this fall, winter or spring. We're coming to all kinds of different places. We're going to be in Atlanta. We're going to be several places in Texas. We're going to be in Minnesota. We're going to be in Kentucky. Our first ever one in our home state of Kentucky. Coming to Lexington. We would love to see you at one of these events. You can go to xomarriage.com and just click on the conferences tag at the top. Get all the info, all the dates. And these events are so fun. They're usually a Friday night, Saturday morning. It's a great little road trip. It's a great getaway. You will laugh, you will learn and I promise you're going to leave feeling encouraged and more connected to your spouse. And and we'd love to meet you in person. We do meet and greets at these we love hearing your stories, giving you a hug and all that. So check that out for us. All right, Today's question has to do with faith. It is how can my husband and I grow more in our faith? Just a simple question. And all of us, that's a desire that we should have. And maybe you were you grew up in a situation or a setting where faith wasn't foundational. Your parents, maybe they weren't Christians or they weren't really living their faith as the forefront of their lives. And you want something different for your own family, but you don't have that foundation from your own childhood. You don't know where to start. Maybe you feel intimidated by the Bible or you feel intimidated in church thinking everybody knows more than you and just starting where you are. God meets us right where we are, which is so encouraging. He is so good to us and so kind and he doesn't want anybody to feel left out. The moment we put our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we're part of his family forever. There are no second class citizens in his family. And just, yeah, just embrace that identity first and foremost. And then there are so many tools out there. I mean, hopefully this podcast is one of them for you as it relates to marriage and faith. But so many tools specifically to help you grow in your knowledge of God's word. There's the YouVersion Bible app, that's Y O U version, which is a free online Bible with a lot of free.

Reading plans which I use regularly. I love it.

Well there, I mean podcast, YouTube video, there's so many ways to engage with God's word and with sermons and with content to help you learn and grow. And then I think as a husband and wife, just talking about those together, getting in the habit of praying together. You know, couples that pray together daily have it's like a less than 1% divorce rate. It was the craziest low divorce rate statistic I've ever seen. Just by saying we're going to commit to praying together daily, there's something that God does to fuse us together with spiritual intimacy when we just take time every day to do that.

It's so important. It doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to use language you wouldn't use in the daily. I mean, just talk to God as your father who loves you, who created you and just tell him what you're thankful for, thank him for that and then put your needs before him and say like, lord, help us in these areas. And it really does bring you together in a way like nothing else can. And that's something that we've committed to from the beginning of the time we got really when we were dating, we were praying together even. And we've continued that on in our marriage. And I think one of my favorite things to do is talk about like what we're reading in the Bible and then just talking through it. We do that quite a bit. And it could be in the car, it could be on a walk, it could be just Randomly through the day and just being open about where you are in your faith journey or even if you have a hurdle, you know, like, we've had some hard news recently through different deaths of dear ones, you know, and.

Well, and people that have been either up close or from a distance.

Yeah.

Mentors in the faith, people we've looked up to in the faith that it turned out, you know, we're living with secret sin.

Yeah.

And all of us are sinners. So, you know, don't get me wrong. But when you're living with secret sin to the point of, of it almost feeling like a different life, a double life, I mean, that is, Is so wounding to others. And I mean, we, we try to daily with ourselves. You know, God's put us in a position of influence in a, in a, in a way that it relates to faith. And we, we, we. We hold that as a sacred responsibility. We don't want to blow that because for our own marriage, for our own faith, for our own family, and just for the, the body of Christ as a whole, we don't ever want to bring shame. But when, when you've been hurt by a church leader, you've been hurt by a mentor.

Well, more than just being flabbergasted or being disappointed and sad, saddened by it, heartbroken by it, it can weigh on you. And through that, we've really prayed through that. Like, we've really talked through some of our. Just hard, you know, like, the hard part of accepting some of those things, that they happen the way they happen, and, and that's, you know, and to not lose faith just because of that, I think that's really important. So. And just talking about some of the hard points of accepting what happened, it just, you know, it reminds us to keep our faith even when people are flawed, because we're all flawed. We all can make mistakes. And even beyond mistakes, we can do terrible things that hurt people and, you know, really make you question. Well, like when, you know, it makes you go back and question, well, when you said this to me, did you really mean it? Or when you did this, was it authentic or was it because you had some agenda? You know, it can cause all that. But I think being able to lean into one another and into God together and know that God is good and God is good at being God and he's a good God. You know, that's something I learned at she speaks with Proverbs 31 many years ago. And I love that statement because it's in the hard moments you need to Remember that and be like, God did not do this. God exposed this in his timing, but he did not do this. And sometimes the truth is really hard to take, but the truth is the truth and the truth sets us free ultimately. But when you're processing the truth as a Christian, especially if you're new to the faith, it can be so hard. And so I just would encourage you, if you're going through that kind of something like that, like us, like going through maybe somebody dying or getting hard news about someone you thought was living a faithful life and they weren't. I mean, maybe it's even your own spouse. I mean, maybe you're taking, you know, you all have shared your faith, you are Christians together, and your spouse maybe was unfaithful or, or not telling the truth about something and it's caused. It's kind of wrecked your faith a bit. Be open about that with each other, and that's how you live and that's how you grow. And I know there's been times where I've just had what I would call being in a funk, you know, just kind of like, just, just not quite. I mean, I can recognize myself. Like, I'm not quite myself. My faith isn't quite what it normally is. And you'll help me out of that funk and not like giving me platitudes or glossing over it, but just saying like, well, let's talk through that and being like, yeah, that really sucks. I mean, or that that's, yeah, that was terrible. Or, you know what I'm saying, like, just really processing through that. I think being real and authentic about our faith is just huge because that's how we grow. We can't grow when we're just being like plastic people going to church and doing our, our duty. You know, we really live it day to day in what we put into our mind, what we allow to seep into our heart. And I think we want to be that safe place for each other to talk about even when we're having a hard time with our faith, maybe a little bit. And I think not being scared to question is big. Even in the counseling space. I've had counselees feel guilty for having a shaky faith at a certain point in their life when something really bad has happened. And I'm like, that's okay. You still cling to God and bring your questions to God. He's not surprised by them. You know, the worst thing we could do is just stop talking to God and just stop, you know, bringing anything to him and then it just piles up on us, and we feel alone. And so I think as married people, we first bring it to the Lord. But if we're having trouble bringing it to the Lord because we're mad at God and that's okay, we bring it to our spouse and say, will you help me talk through this? Like, I just feel. I feel like I'm really kind of drawing away from God, and I don't want to do that, but it's because I'm kind of angry about this thing or help me figure out what it is. Like, what am I feeling? And if you feel like you're really tripping up and you're like, I'm in a spiral, that's when you, you know, reach out for. For counseling, Christian counseling or Christian coaching. You know, there's. There's a lot you can do to help, you know, your next steps. You know, God doesn't want us to just keep spiraling, you know, over this one issue and. And then just not doing anything about it. You know, it's like, let's do something. Just that one next step that we need to take to grow in our faith and not guilting each other over it, you know, not making each other feel guilty because we're having a hard time. I mean, everyone has a hard time and not saying things like, well, you're supposed to be the leader of this home, you know, when it comes to faith. Or, I thought you grew up in a Christian home. Why do you not know how to fix this? Or, you know what I'm saying? Like, I get where we can say those statements, but that doesn't help anything.

Yeah, it doesn't be each other's advocate. And if there's church hurt at the root of this or disappointment, I want to recommend a resource that just came out. Our good friend, Pastor Joe Dobbins. Joe And Kayla have five precious kids and pastor Twin Rivers Church in the St. Louis area.

They're awesome.

Wonderful people, wonderful church. He just released a book called Hope After Church Hurt, and it's an excellent book. I was honored to endorse it. I just think a lot of folks could benefit from that because a lot of people have been wounded by Christian leaders disappointed by church experience. And that breaks God's heart, too. And he doesn't want that to be something that keeps you away from him, and it does, or keeps you away from church, because he wants us all to experience life giving Christian community together and for church to be a safe place for you again. So that that book could be. Could be a great resource to get you there 100%.

And again, just instead of maybe looping the hard faith things all into kind of one category and writing off church or writing off faith or writing off the Bible, reach out, talk to each other. And if you know a Christian in your life that you trust, maybe together, you go to that, that person or that couple and say, can you help us to grow in our faith? We've just been, you know, we either don't know a lot about the faith or we're down, you know, because of different things that have happened. But can you mentor us? I mean, mentorship is like a beautiful gift, and we've certainly had many mentors along the way and, and including our own families, but I think just being willing to be honest and reach out for help.

So good, guys. Thanks so much for tuning in. Keep prioritizing your faith. The more you love Jesus, the more capacity you'll have to love each other. And he's the one part of your relationship that will never, ever fail or disappoint you. Thanks so much for tuning in. God bless. We'll see you next time.

Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode of Hump Day Q and A. We love getting your questions and we want to answer your question. So if you go to nakedmarriagepodcast.com, you can submit your question right there, or you can follow us on Instagram avanashleywillis and you can give us your questions right there by giving us a dm. So we'll catch you next time on Hump Day Q and A.