This week we highlight 6 callings God has for every marriage. We share personal stories and struggles we have experienced in our own marriage, as well as the importance of these callings and how they impact the marriage relationship and beyond. The 6 callings we present include Prayer Love Forgiveness Trust Purity and Generosity. These 6 callings are foundational in order for marriages to experience extraordinary. In each of these categories we share scripture, testimonies, and application. Our hope is that couples would evaluate their marriage to see if they are excelling in these callings or need to grow in them. We hope this episode is encouraging and challenging. Stay tuned each week where we will be discussing topics hoping to inspire you to cultivate an extraordinary marriage. FOR MORE ENCOURAGEMENT https://marriageaftergod.com https://instagram.com/marriageaftergod SHOP MARRIAGE RESOURCES https://shop.unveiledwife.com FOR WIVES https://unveiledwife.com https://facebook.com/unveiledwife FOR HUSBANDS https://husbandrevolution.com https://facebook.com/HusbandRevolution READ: We're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. Today we're going to be talking about God's calling for your marriage. Lots of people think they have a calling or don't know what their calling might be, but we believe that there's six callings that every Christian marriage has and we're here to share 'em with you. So Aaron, before we get started, can you just explain a little bit about what does it mean to have a calling, what does it mean when you hear the word I have a calling on my marriage? So that people understand what we're saying. So just growing up in the church, we've all heard this idea of our calling and a lot of times it's our individual calling like what's God call, am I a missionary? Am I gonna be starting a church? Am I gonna be a pastor? Am I gonna be a worship leader? And there's always finite things that people might feel called to, but when it comes to our marriage, do we believe our marriage has a calling? And we believe every marriage has a specific calling. A specific purpose A specific purpose That God's going to use them for. Yeah based in their unique giftings, talents, position in life that God wants to use in those marriages for his purposes. But, that might be vague for some people and some marriages might be thinking well, what's my purpose? So what we thought we'd do is sit down and share with you six callings that we believe very Christian marriage is called to. These are callings that God has for your marriage today, whether you know what the specific calling is from God and you're in the ministry that God has for your marriage, as a couple. These callings are for every Christian marriage. There's more than this, but we picked out the six that we love the most and that we've kind of walked throughout in our life. And so this gives you a place to start in your marriage and say okay, God already has a calling for us. We don't have to guess or we don't have to pretend we don't know or not know how to figure out where to get that calling. You can actually start today and say oh this is, at least we know these callings that God has for us. That's really cool, I'm so excited to jump in. I just wanna encourage you listening, if you, as we go through each six, if you could just take evaluation of your marriage and see if you guys are already fulfilling these callings in your life or if you're not, if these are areas that you're wrestling with or you're struggling with, then hopefully our encouragement today will help you step up in those areas. Yeah and you can let us know in the comments what areas you that think you've already been walking in and you're like, oh, and you never saw them as callings. Or you can let us know what areas that you didn't recognize that you needed to be walking in. Let us know in the comments, we like to read through those. So let's get started. We're gonna start, we have six of them. So the first calling that every Christian marriage has is to prayer and this could be together or separate. It should eventually be together, but some of you might not be able to do that. But let me read the verse that goes with this. Philippians four, six through seven. And it says do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Every marriage, every Christian marriage has a calling to pray and that seems easy, it seems like the easy bible answer, but I wanna talk a little bit about this real quick from our own life and I have a question for you. How would you say prayer has played a role in our marriage? Well I would say it was significant in saving our marriage, for sure. We started out in our relationship with praying for each other and praying for the purpose that God had for our marriage. We prayed like every night during our dating years. Yep, and throughout our engagement and then even through our marriage and when we hit that hard spot in our marriage, when we, when we were contemplating divorce and just were both really isolated from each other And broken and frustrated, yeah. You were really adamant about prayer. So every night you were still praying for us and my heart was a little bit harder towards God and I was really frustrated and wrestling with the issues that we were facing. But you were, you were faithful to prayer. Which was hard. For all the husbands watching, my prayers start off very hopeful in the first few years of my marriage and eventually got very angry and bitter. But I still prayed because I had that foundation in my heart and I was like no, this is the only way I can see us getting healing and so I kept praying. You actually got to a point where you kind of stopped praying. Yeah we used to pray together every night and then slowly I just kind of faded out and listened to your prayers. Still participated, but didn't Right. Didn't pray as much but I will say that your faithfulness in praying every night really helped me to embrace God and come back to him, to turn my heart back to him and to trust him because I knew that you trusted him. So that did play a big role in saving our marriage. Yeah and so, prayer's a little ominous for a lot of Christians, which it shouldn't be, but there's no classes on prayer. I know some churches probably have that, but it's not like a, we just assume like oh prayer's supposed to be easy to us. You know, what would you say are some, is prayer just talking to God? Is it like you have the right words and you have, you bring in scripture at the right time in the prayer? Is there any, how does it look in our marriage? What does prayer look like for us? Well how I've always viewed it is, it's just our way of communicating with God. So it's basically opening up our hearts and just sharing what's on our, what's on our hearts and what's on our minds and sharing it with God and what's really cool about what I've experienced through praying with you is that not only are we submitting everything to God and asking for his guidance in our relationship, but every once in a while there's a compliment in there about me when you're praying and thanking God for me. Well when you hear me pray for you, you actually hear my heart for you. Yeah, exactly, I get to hear your heart for me and that affirms me and it affirms my relationship with you so that's been a huge encouragement. But I think that people can get really overwhelmed when they think about prayer and going to God and overthinking it, you know? Right. Feeling like it has to be done perfectly and it doesn't. So you're saying that the couples that are watching now could start today? They can start today. They can just say okay lord, I don't know what I'm saying to you, but I want help or thank you and it could be as simple as that. Yeah, so we encourage you. So the first calling that every Christian marriage has is to prayer and this means together. So some of you might be married and your spouse, your husband or your wife is not a believer or is where my wife was, in a place where she's kind of angry or bitter or they're angry or bitter. You can still pray without them, for them. And with them and over them. So, don't let a disunity keep you from prayer because you have a unity with Christ and Christ, as our mediator, gives us direct access to the throne of God that we can actually open up our hearts and we can pray directly to God. We don't need a high priest anymore cause we have Christ who is our perfect high priest. So we just wanna encourage you that you can actually start praying today, whether together or individually, start praying today. Yeah and if you're doing it individually, which is great, every once in a while, invite your spouse to pray with you or say, hey, I'd love to pray for you, can you give me a list? Can you give me five things that I can really focus on? I know that that's super helpful. And I know it'll totally bless them. Yeah. And I just wanna bring this quote up that our pastor always says to us. Prayer isn't preparation for the battle, prayer is the battle. So we don't look at prayer as like, well that's a supplementary thing that we do for our faith or it's something that we do only when it's really bad. Prayer is the battle and we're in a spiritual warfare every day. Against our own flesh, against the enemies in the world and in the spirit and so prayer, we need to go to battle on our knees in prayer, in praying for the things that we care about in praying for the things that we are concerned about and going to our father and saying lord, we need your mind on this, we need your heart on this, we need
