Marriage As Ministry | Ron + Hope: Unfiltered

Foreign.

Hey, everybody, it's Ron and Hope. Unfiltered. Real raw and relevant. And the same thing just about every time we start.

Do we sell these?

Ron's either chomping on a Lifesaver or a Lifesaver cough drop or he's drinking his water. No, we don't.

We need to sell these. It's really cool to just me and you.

Exclusive running.

Make them exclusive to everybody.

Real raw, relevant. Do y' all want these? Cool? Let us know and we can put them up on our.

I bet you we could put it in Everybody's hands for $400.

Oh, my God.

Or maybe $500 a month. Or maybe $500. Give you a whole set of them.

No.

How you doing?

I'm doing good, people.

How you're really doing?

I'm doing good.

Ronald, tell people we promise to be real raw.

You being a meanie. They know I had surgery. I'm doing better from my surgery. But I am on the back end of my hormones. I'm supposed to get my hormone pellets tomorrow. I get them every three months. And like the last two weeks before it's time, you really feel it, Ron, I am not mean. I am not witchy. I'm not weepy. I'm none of those things. I get quiet. I get very.

You had a hysterectomy very early in your 30s after a third child, because you had to. A lot of complications you were having. And then for a long time, you didn't do any hormones because I won't call any doctors name, but after they removed your machinery and we were still young, very young.

Well, they didn't think it would affect me that early, but it did.

And nobody told you that. Everything that keeps your homeowner balanced, by the way, we're taking it out and putting it on this operating table over here. I think the thing about the podcast that's refreshing me and you is because so much of our life is spiritual. That's what we've committed our life to. Your spiritual development, your spiritual growth, your walk with God, experiences with God. We live for that.

Is your belly showing right there?

Oh, I got an undershirt.

Oh, good. Okay.

And. What?

I just wondered if you were showing everybody your bed.

I'll say I ripped. I was sh. I shredded.

Shredded. That's it.

I wished I was. I am talking about.

You said we given ourselves to spiritual.

Development, that the podcast is that one place where I think we come here and everything ain't spiritual. You've got an emotional person. You've got a mental person, you've got a physical body, and we talk about those sides. Everything ain't a demon. And the fact is, when you hit your extraordinary low. One of the things we did as well as getting ministry is you went and got everything checked. And I remember being with you in one of them. I don't know if I was with you in all of them, but I went with you in one of them.

The first one you went to me.

And I remember the doctor came out and you know, you get all your blood levels checked and the Bible even tells us that everything is in the.

Blood, life is in the blood.

And so I remember he came out and looked at your first number. I mean, there's like 20 or 30 different things. He's looking at the first one. He said, that's enough right there to put you in a full blown depression. Well, most of the time in church, if somebody's depressed, what are we going to do? Put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness? Okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but I've always said if you buke a devil and it don't buke it wasn't a devil, right? Because he has to go. He can't stand up against the authority of the name of Jesus. He has to go. So if that's not it, then you got to look to another part of your person. And the fact is your hormones were woful woefully.

We are natural human people.

And he said, he looked at that and said, I don't know how you held it together as long as you did. He just said it was just so messed up. So we had this operation done on you very early in age with no replacement whatsoever. But taking out the machinery that.

I've been doing hormone replacement for 16 years now, since I was 40 years old. And it makes such a. I mean, that's not what we're talking about today.

Well, a little bit it is. It's the pellets, though. And the pellets are.

Yeah, I take pellets and they have a flow, they release, they melt, you know, subcutaneously under your skin. So they put them in and they just slowly start dissolving. But once they're gone, they're gone. And life, depending on your schedule, how rigorous it is, your stress level, you know, you metabolize, determines how much, how.

Fast you metabolize them.

And I've been through a pretty tough surgery, been traveling a lot, and. And so I think they left me quicker this time. And I have been, like, not even motivated. Like, I just want to stay home the last two weeks. I just want to stay in pajamas. Want to go to bed earlier. All the things just kind of low. And so I get my hormones tomorrow, y'. All.

I call it. Yes. Yes. I call it. She gets quiet and quick. Quiet and quick.

No, I get quiet. And then he's like, what's wrong with you? Okay. The dude knows. I don't have.

I don't know that I've ever asked you. What's wrong with you? The way you just yesterday we were.

Going down the hall.

What's wrong with you? I don't do like that.

What's wrong with you? Ho.

Yeah. That's more like what I do.

And I looked at him. I was like, I've already. We've talked about this today. I told you.

See, that's what I did.

Because he should have known. How did you forget?

Men in three hours. We should know.

How'd you forget? You know I have an appointment.

We should know. They don't have to say anything. We should know.

The Bible says you should.

Yeah, we should know. The Bible says you should just be in our spirit.

If you're a man of God, what.

They'Re going through, what they need, and we just should know.

Live with her.

You need to know that according to knowledge, men. One thing you need to learn about marriage is that we will always be working on us. Okay.

I hope you are.

Need to always know that we will always be. We will always be working on me to get this thing right.

And next week we should be in a better place.

I should just picked up on it.

But next week we should be in a better place.

So what does it feel like? Well, okay, you're. You're. You're on the backside. They've. They're going to deplete. What does that feel like? It feels like everything aggravates you.

No, it feels. It's not aggravate. For me, everybody's different, but for me, you. You remember this, Ron, Even when I had all my equipment and I had cycles, I was never mean. I was not moody. I was not weepy. During cycle time, I just wasn't. I would hurt.

You wept a lot.

I did not. It hurt and I was uncomfortable, but I was never emotional. So. So now I'm not emotional. I'm not moody or weepy. I'm quiet. I get very quiet.

Baby, I remember many times catching you in the kitchen in the middle of the night, crying, eating little Debbie cakes.

Jesus.

So Anyway, this is what we're going to talk about. Marriage as ministry. Marriage as Ministry. So if you're on here and you're saying, like, I'm going to check out. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because we believe God will bring a significant other into everybody's life. We believe for that. We believe we're meant. We are an answer to prayer for somebody else. Somebody you're an answer. Somebody. They're praying for who you are and what you have. And so a lot of these things, to be honest with you, learning these things after marriage is really behind the eight ball. You need to have some of these things in your toolbox before you ever come together.

You know, just the title, Marriage as Ministry. So significant, because most people go into marriage looking for somebody else to meet their needs.

Forgive the term, though. When somebody looks on YouTube, marriage as ministry. That's not a sexy clickbait. They're like, ugh, going to the next one. But the ones where you go, ugh are probably the ones that would help you. Because I'm going to tell you, when I just listen to secular people, especially just like TikTok influencers and things like that, when I hear them talk about relationships, I'm like, that is a train wreck waiting to happen. The wisdom they have concerning relationships, because it's a million miles away. What I mean is marriage is ministry. The Bible says that for an elder or overseer, depending on which translation you read, it said that one of the qualifications is he must rule his own house. Well, if God ever had. What I felt like was, maybe I'm going to have a talk with him, because maybe that was a little bit of an unfair command. I. I always thought like that was one of them. Because I don't know that managing ministry is nearly as tough as managing my family.

I agree 100%.

So to rule your own house well, is almost like God's litmus test, because I'm going to tell you if you can do that, you can manage about anything. But before I go there, because I want to break that down a little bit. I want to unpack that.

That's a big one.

I want to unpack that. But we've got a sponsor, so hang on, because I want everybody to hear, what is it wrong? It's a new. And a sponsor.

A sponsor.

Yeah, we got a new one.

Okay, talk about it.

She does this better than me. She does this better than me. Because this is the part where we have to read it off the teleprompter and make sure we get all the information. Right. And I don't do it.

Well, one more time.

Some old sponsor.

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We're grateful for our sponsors. Yes, sponsors talked about ruling his own house. Well, I think not looking for any support here. So don't. I think it's highly questionable though I gave a valiant effort. I think it's highly questionable what I ruled my own house. Well, I've often thought about if somebody put me in a parenting panel and ask me a question, I probably say, you know what? I don't know that I'm qualified to answer that that has not been easy. That has not been easy to navigate. Let me bring people into our life and we're going to talk about the practical things where marriage is mystery, but let them see it from our vantage point. By the time our kids got where they cared about anything. I'm not talking about like three running around the house or in diapers, but where people's opinions matter, friends matter, that age. End of elementary, junior high. Ish. We had come out of gutter living and things had actually turned around and God had opened up a lot of opportunities for us, and our life got better, and it got better quick. It drug out where we really struggled a long time, but when it turned, it turned on a dime. So most of the time, our kids, junior high, up through high school, they. They lived in a good situation. I wouldn't say privilege, but, you know, we was able to put them had cars, you know, we, we. They had lunch money. They had nice neighbors. We lived in safe places. You know, we went on vacations. The, you know, the. The things that every family would want to grow up and have the resources to enjoy. We. We were fortunate. God blessed us with that. But there were things about being my kid that they just hated. We had a huge church in a smaller town. And I know people are like, what? But I mean, death threats and kidnappings, bomb threats. My daughter got kidnapped one time. I mean, that girl got put in jail in Florida. I mean, it was just ridiculous. So if they would walk to the teen center, which was across the campus, we had seven buildings across our campus.

Security would fall away.

Security would fall. Man, they hated it. They just hated being followed around by security. They couldn't stand it. But there's no way I could risk that not happening. They walked in. If they got in trouble. There were eyes from church people on them all the time. So it was like they were being raised by a vill. So if anybody did anything, I get a call from a church member.

And they hated that.

They hated that. They hated getting heckled in their school because we were a very Pentecostal church. We were a very expressive church. People called me Apostle. That's not common among church in them, but in that local area, they didn't see me as a pastor. They saw me as I brought something really apostolic to the region, something pioneering and, you know, so my oldest would go to high school and they call him Apostle Chase, and he hated that stuff. And the reverberations that it had through our family were not easy to navigate when it came to me and you marriage's ministry. We had to make sure that the anointing and the gifts that we had to be on a stage did not destroy the couple who fell in love on a college campus. And I don't know that that was always easy.

I don't know that it was either. And I don't know that we.

I don't know that we did it right.

I don't think we did it well. I just don't because, Ron, number one, we didn't have any voices in our life. We didn't have wisdom in our ear. We didn't have, I mean, we just had, you know, my parents marriage, your parents marriage, which was simplistic, very simple, very simplistic. We did life, our life was not on scale than our parents.

Our life was not.

We didn't know what we were doing. It was like we were caught up in that snowball that was just going down the hill, getting bigger and bigger and our arms were sticking out and our legs were sticking out. And I agree we've done so many things right, but we've done so many things wrong as well.

Now look, great intentions.

Since we have gone through our healing, unfortunately, we had to lose a lot to get a lot. We've got a lot now. But we've paid for a lot of our mistakes publicly. Most people listening paid a high price.

You know, paid a high price.

Our kids have paid for our mistakes.

They paid a high price.

But we have learned through healing how to have a great marriage. And I think we do intentionally keep it in the forefront of our mind that the other person is more important.

Just in general, when I say marriage is ministry, I said the other night, you let me teach one of the healing, the heart classes that we have for our staff. We did that for our staff. And I told them, I said, whenever you go into a relationship saying, I'm going to get married because I need.

I need anything, just fill in the blank.

You have already set a trajectory for absolute death of the relationship. Because anything that is marriage, you have to go into it saying, I want to give everything, because that's what love is. Love gives, love gives.

Love doesn't take.

I've heard people say, you know, I need to get me a husband who's got a six figure figure. And I'm like, oh my gosh, right? I give that thing 12 months before it's come off the rails. And the thing is, if you go into it because, you know, I got these two kids, I need these taken care of or you're A man. I need a woman to give me a need. Whenever you go in and putting your need out front, that is the death of a relationship.

You know, it's not even just marriage. It's in general.

No relationship can survive when one person is giving and the other person's taking. I tell people it's like, especially in.

Marriage, when both of them are trying to take, take, take, take, take, take.

I tell people it's like an ATM machine, you know, it's just simple mathematics. If you keep making withdrawals and you never make deposits, you go back one day, it says, account empty. And you look at so many relationships and especially marriages, and the account is empty because everybody's making withdrawals, nobody's making deposits.

Yes, I need you to meet my needs. I need you to be nice to me. I need you to give me sex. I need you to have this house clean. I need you to be nice and always, you know, make me feel better.

So we went to a church a while back. I won't say the exact churches, lots of churches in Arizona. They asked us to do a marriage thing. And we know this couple. We're friends with them. I'd say they're good friends of ours. And I got to talking about the man being the most crucified one in the house, talking about, how did Jesus become the head? Because he became obedient unto death, therefore God highly exalted him. Well, how do you become the man, the priest of your house? You become obedient unto death, therefore your family will highly exalt you. They will highly respect you if you're the deadest one in the house. You're dead to everybody and everything because you serve it. And so I have taken that literally. And I try to become a servant in the house. And actually, I tell people, I guess it's weird. I get great pleasure out of doing things for you. I like it. I get satisfaction out of it. It blesses me. But we went and sat down with that couple later who was raised in very patriarchal family. I mean, the man, there's a world, everybody revolves around him, and he sits on his throne. And they were quiet. And these are our good friends. They looked at us, they said, you really challenged us today. They said, that is not the way any of our families operate. That's not the way this house operates. And talk about how it shook them. When we get up in the morning, do we have it down pat? No, but we've come a long way in 30 something years. We probably get up with a mindset of. Can I help you right out of getting out of bed? Do you need this? I'm always scared of you falling. Why am I scared of you falling?

I don't know.

You've had two hip operations and all of our floors are slick. I just don't. I don't know. But you know, do you know, do you need help getting out of this? Do you need help getting in the shower? Some of it just because I want to see you naked. But some of it is I just want. I just want to care. Yeah. I just want to be around. Whenever you're naked, truth comes out, you know, you walk out. Have you had your coffee yet? No. I got your coffee. I mean, we start our day that.

Way, but that's intentional. There is not some fairy out of the sky that comes. You decide to do that fairy dust on you and makes you want.

You decide to do that, to just.

Get up and serve your spouse. No, our human nature is selfish. Our human nature is.

But the nature of God is back.

In the back of your head. It's like, but if I start this, I'm going to be the only one giving. But what if you both started serving.

Opens the heart of the other. It is almost impossible to be mad at or offended at someone who serves you. I mean, you got to try hard to be angry at somebody who serves you. So, you know, do you want. Ron, I'll make the coffee. Just sit right there. I'm going to bring it to you. You've already opened up my heart, so I'm looking at you. Are you cold? You want me to get your snuggie? And it just begins.

You're snuggie. I love my snuggie.

It just begins. I'll go cut on the fire. We got a little, you know, gas fireplace. I'll go cut on the fire. And you know the things that. That sounds so simple. But it's the first. When it's the first language you speak. You ain't even wiped the cracklings out of your eyes yet. Can I do this for you, baby? You got me. You got. I'm yours the whole rest of the day.

But when you both are doing it, nobody ever gets in the negative. Nobody ever has a deficit because you're both doing it.

What should a woman. What is a woman's posture if she feels like sex is ministry? I'm gonna see what you got to say.

Now, what is my posture?

What do you think toward that?

I agree with that. Sometime because, number one, a man sex drive normally Is way out ahead of the woman's. So I have to.

We are that rare difference. But, yeah, you're right.

Most of the time anyway. Knowing that this is a big question. Does. Does a woman want to have sex Every single.

Because we hear people come talk to us, and the woman resents it.

Right.

I don't. I don't ever remember. I'm on blow. I'm gonna toot your horn. I don't ever remember you being like that. I think you would. I don't want to use the word. You used to use mercy. Remember you used to call it a mercy.

Mercy screw.

Yeah, but you said it. It's out there now, raw, real relevant.

Here's the thing. We talked about the mercy screw. Because I know that's crude to some of y'. All.

Some of you. I know. I know we got a lot of people going to write us in. I'm so disappointed that you used that.

Word on the bucket in our talks. That was the term we came up with.

That was the way we took a tense situation and made us laugh. Yes.

So. Because I had to explain to him, not every single time was, oh, I can't wait, and I'm going to tear you apart, and I can't wait to.

Make love, because I felt rejection.

He would feel rejected if. I know. But then on the same hand, he was like, well, if you don't want to. I don't want to do it. If you don't want to do it. And I said, well, sometimes, Ron, for me, I'm. Because I love you, and I know that this is a priority for you right now.

I'm not aroused at this moment, but I do love you.

Yes, absolutely. I'm doing this because I know it's something that you desire. And you know what? That's what ministry is sometimes.

And I had to get over the fact that you could ever be around me and not be aroused. That was a big hurdle for me because I just couldn't understand it. With my drip and my swag and everything that I had around you, Y'.

All pray for me.

I just didn't. I couldn't understand it.

Y' all pray.

So she had to try to explain it to me.

I did try to explain it.

How can you be in the room?

You know what he said? He was like, mercy screw. He was like, okay, okay, I'll take it.

Whatever. Whatever agreement we need to come to.

We need to get here.

Whatever agreement we need is what. I guess what we need to call this segment because YouTube would go crazy if we. Yeah, that's okay.

Name.

Marriage being ministry like because people are going to end up there. So I just went straight there. There are times where even with your body, you know the Bible, the Bible has these two verses that nobody reads. It says that the woman does not have authority over her body, but the man.

That can be used in a position.

The man does not have the authority over body but the woman. I think that's what that mercy thing means. In other words, I don't have the right to only be affectionate with you. Only totally and completely when it is perfect with me. That's what I'm thinking. That I understand that there are times where you may need affection where I don't feel especially affectionate or you may know that I need it. And you ain't really you busy, your mind's a million other places but you don't feel specially affectionate. But you understand that because of what I'm going through at that moment. I think you're very attentive to that. You know when I'm up against something, you know, when I'm stressed, you know, when my motor is high, you know what to do, you know to put it down, you know what to say, you know how to touch, you know exactly what to do. And a lot of those things come with time. But here's the thing. If we'd have had somebody when we were 26, 27 telling us to look for this, we could have functioned in this much much sooner, right? And so that's one of the things I like for the pod. They hear us making fun and talking about mercy screws and this, that and other. But the fact is marriage being all relationships, but marriage above all going into it understanding you get the best out of somebody when you give the most to them.

It's true.

I get the best version of Hope when Hope is fully aware that there is nothing I won't do for her. And when you know that and when I'm demonstrating it, the best version of you lives in my house. Vice versa, you know, like I told you, you know, I just went out. Her love language is gifts. And I do mean, I mean like you can just about bring her some M and Ms. I mean socks. She likes nice things, of course, but she can be a very cheap date too. I mean just. I think it was the fact that I was thinking about ain't the amount of money spent. I knew you was having a rough day the other day and I just actually said she'll laugh at this. This will Be funny. It's Snuggie.

I ripped that thing open.

You ripped it open right there. And put it around you right at that moment. But I went two and a half weeks without one day. I felt like without one minute off, but without one day. And I looked at you. One day I said, I'm tired. And you said, that's good. I've already got us two days in Lake Tahoe. I didn't have to say anything. What did you do? I got to get him out of here. That meant a lot to me. And the Bible says for the man to dwell with her with knowledge. But you know me.

That's right.

Just get it. Get him away from this atmosphere just a little bit. He snaps. Right?

I mean, even just simple things, it's not about trips and sex.

It's about knowing what I needed.

The other day, I was having an awful day, and you were fixing to go pick something up at a dealership, and you were like, well, why don't you just ride with me and then we'll go get some lunch? And I was like, ron, can I just stay here? And you go do that, and then we'll meet up, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I really want to just go crawl in the bed. And I wasn't even ready yet. Didn't have my makeup on, didn't have anything. You know, I knew I was going to get up and get ready. And you went. You just kind of looked down and you were like, okay, and what did I do?

I haven't seen you none. We've been together, and I want to be with you. I went and give me 20 minutes.

I said, give me 20 minutes. I'll ride with you. Did I want to do that? Absolutely not. I didn't. I'm being very honest, but I knew.

Didn't you have the time of your life?

I knew that he really just wanted to be with me.

It had nothing to do.

And you know what I did? I denied what I wanted. And that's. And we do that back and forth and back and forth. That's what we're talking about.

Can I be honest with you? I somewhat knew that was happening. Okay. We got back. I went in there and made your bed up, pulled the side down. I knew you wanted to go take a nap. Okay. I went in there, you laid down. I was putting my hands through your hair. I kissed you on the forehead, and I prayed for you.

You did.

I pulled the covers of you and I left the room. And you told me you went to, like, REM Sleep. REM sleep. Yeah. You went to sleep. And it's back and forth all day and it ain't keeping score. No, it's not keeping score. It's just. It's being. I think what you said, being mindful, involved too.

Sowing and raping. It's a law. You're going to get what you give. Bottom line, if your heart posture is to serve, you're going to get served.

You're creating a good cycle. There's terrible cycles. This is a good. I knew you went with me and you weren't crazy about going, but I hadn't seen you much and it was my first day off. And so we come back this way and I knew you wanted to take a nap. And then, you know, I knew there's a certain place you wanted. No, you didn't want to go eat. I wanted to, but you just kind of wanted to stay in pajamas. I'm like, just order something. It's give and take all day long. And we get to the end of the day and we got it right.

Yeah. And nobody is burning.

We got it right. Nobody's mad, nobody feels deficient. Nobody feels like they've been robbed, cheated, done wrong, offended or nothing like that. Just being mindful of each other. You don't have to be 55 to get this right. You don't have to be 55. We have people come up and say, now what are your responsibilities and what I know. And we.

What's your role? What's your response?

Yeah, and you know what? They really. They really want to know Yard or.

They want to know, like, do what we got to wrap it up into your relationships. Trying to take. Go into it. Trying to get everybody. Thanks for being here. If this has been good, why don't you subscribe? Number one, just hit that subscribe button. That helps us. And then share this. Take this and share it to your Facebook page. Share it to your Instagram, send it to some buddies if you know this helped you like. And share and subscribe.

Getting hormones tomorrow.

Getting hormones. Been running up. Unfiltered. Real raw, relevant.

See you soon.