In preparing one’s children to be married, the most important inheritance parents can give them is not money, but the example of a faithful marriage, based on God’s Word, lived out before them. While didactic training is necessary, the age-old adage is true—there’s more “caught than taught.” In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm discuss seven good marriage habits that couples should embrace that not only honor God, but that will prepare their children for strong marriages, one day, as the Lord blesses. 

 

First, learn how to talk. Second, get reconciled quick. Third, don’t always have to do things your own way. Fourth, think the best of one another. Fifth, accept shortcomings. Sixth, deal with disappointments in a healthy way. And, seventh, create a happy home life. To boil it all down— make sure your marriage is a happy marriage, rooted in Christ, that creates a happy home. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life Podcast. Today we're going to talk about seven great habits in your marriage that will prepare your own children for marriage. Jason, so hey, it's really important that you prepare your children for marriage. Just say yes. Yes.

Yeah. But here's the deal. You're always preparing your children for marriage every day of your life. Because they're watching. Because they're watching.

And, you know, it's good to give kids some didactic instruction on marriage, but who you is and who you are every day is really one of the most important things. Well, and if the didactic or the teaching portion of how you're preparing them for marriage doesn't match what they're seeing every day, This is devastating and really counterproductive. So it is good to teach them facts that they'll need to know about their marriage, but it needs to match up with what they're actually seeing. And they get to see more than anybody else. Yeah.

And I guess the reality is hypocrisy works. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Genuineness works, real love works, and hypocrisy works. In different directions.

In different directions. Yeah. So we're going to talk about great marriage habits to prepare your kids for marriage every day. Yeah. I think the fact of life is that you're going to end up seeing a lot of your marriage as you've lived it day by day in the marriage of your children.

So the question is, will that be a good thing or not such a good thing? And you really want it to be a good thing, but for that to be a blessing to your children and not a curse, you have to live patterns that will help them and not harm them when they reproduce them in their marriage, which they inevitably will in bigger little ways. Yeah. Hey, so like we've been married a long time. How many years you've been married?

It is 32 years now, 32 years. Next week for us, it's gonna be 43. Wow. 43. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll have to say I came into my marriage with the blessing of what I watched my parents live out before me for 20 years before I got married. And very much the same for Janet, my wife. She came into marriage watching a really good healthy marriage too. Yeah.

So, hey, we're going to give seven great habits, but tell us the story. What happened? Oh, I love this story. One morning, I was probably 10 years old, come to the breakfast table and things are icy. I'm not used to things being icy because my parents have a very affectionate, warm marriage, but at the breakfast table, things are icy.

Well, their bridge club had met the night before and things didn't go well at the bridge table. And things were said, and not much was said after that until the breakfast table. So there's silence at the breakfast table. No yelling, no, but definite discernible coldness at the breakfast table. So that was so out of character for our home that I went off to school thinking, it's over for my parents.

Their marriage is probably not going to survive. So by dinnertime, everything had been reconciled. I don't know what happened in between, but they had obviously had a meeting of the minds and everything was fine. Everything was normal by dinnertime. And what's funny about that story is that In terms of family drama, I really don't have more drama to report.

That sets the end of dramatic conflict in my home. A silly awkwardness at breakfast after Bridge Club the night before. Do you know what a blessing that is to a son whose most wedding, marriage drama that he witnessed, you know, is a silly story like that? A lot of people have a lot of real drama to report. You know, telling that story, I can't remember a single time when my parents were at odds.

Scott, there are gonna be people who are watching this who have no frame of reference. I know. They can't believe, they think you're senile and you just can't remember. Yeah, right. Or they think there are worse things that I've just repressed.

And I'm here to tell you, that's not so. It was really, they cultivated, they were very careful in what they cultivated, especially in, and I'm sure they had conflicts that were more substantive than what I felt at the breakfast table. But they didn't do that in front of my sister and I. And I'm sure they did it in very healthy, healthy ways. There are healthy ways to have conflict.

Jason, I fear we've just disqualified ourselves from giving marriage council because you have to have a big whole bunch of problems. No, but hey, hey, I've told that story before and had people come up to me after the fact to say, that's nothing like the home that I grew up, but I'm glad you told the story because it lets me know that I can cultivate that in my own marriage and give that gift to my own children. So it's really important that we tell those stories because people need to know this is possible. You know, the apostle Paul talks about walking in the Spirit and what it looks like. And it all has to do with how you treat each other, how you think about each other in Galatians.

And I think that a sweet marriage is possible. It's highly possible when people walk in the Spirit and they obey the Lord, and their hearts are really on the kingdom of God. They understand the purpose of marriage, to display the love of Jesus Christ. It is possible to have a happy marriage, but sometimes it takes a little while to get there with people. We understand that.

So, well, let's talk about seven great habits. These are not, these are not in any particular order or anything like that. They're just scatter gun. Here's, Here's what's, what's a blessing. Let's do it.

Okay. First of all, learn how to talk. Yeah. It, It's no secret that communication is important to a marriage, and yet it's hard to do, especially when things get tense. Communication is free flowing, and when you're leading up to the marriage, you can't even imagine conflict.

Oh, but there'll be conflict over things. Your desires crash into each other's wants and needs. And so there's going to be conflict and it gets a lot harder really fast. So learning how to talk when it's tense or learning how not to talk when it's tense is really important. My experience is that the couples that have a hard time in marriage, it often goes down to they never really learn how to have a tough conversation.

And, in fact, I wrote a book about it called When Talking Gets Tough, How to Have Important Conversations. Now, I wrote this book really for marriage. I started writing it for marriages, but then I thought, you know, I know a lot of young people that are, you know, they're changing their opinions. They're trying to figure out how to talk to their parents. They're having really bad conversations.

There's a version of this for every category of relationship. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we did another book a few years ago, Governing Your Tongue, Richard Baxter, some really great stuff. We have another one in our bookstore, I can't, it's escaping my mind on the government of the tongue. But learning how to talk is really, really important.

But here's the deal. The blessing is the Bible tells you how to do this. And in this book, you know, I give, you know, quite a number of unhealthy patterns of conversation and then a whole bunch of healthy patterns of conversation that come from the Bible. It's the best advice. It's a mistake to think that the Christian ethic is never fight.

Right. No, the Christian ethic is fight fair. Don't fight out of anger. Don't fight for selfish objectives. Don't be mean when you fight.

So anyway. Second, get reconciled quick. Don't take a long time to get reconciled. You don't wanna let things hang between you. You wanna get fast to the table of peacemaking.

So in biblical terms, it's don't let the sun go down on your anger. Sometimes you need to back away to keep your wits about you. That's fair enough. And if you're married to someone who needs a little bit of space, so they don't say things they shouldn't say, then absolutely afford them that space. But at the same time, at the soonest possible moment, you want to be getting back together and getting reconciled.

Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Okay. Get reconciled quick.

And number three, be a yes person. Don't be always contrary. Don't always have to do everything your way. You know, let your spouse lead you into new territory, new tastes, new food, new places, new friends. Just let it flow.

Yeah. So we still have a number of children at home. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard Janet, my wife say these words in our home, try hard to agree. There you go. I like that.

Because we can start, you can fall into a pattern of nitpicking every little thing that's not right about the other person's statement. Right. But you should try hard to agree. You should treat other people's statements like you would want your own statements to be evaluated. And that takes away a lot of your disagreement when you're trying hard to agree.

Yeah. It reminds me of something that William Gouge says in this book, Building a Godly Home and the, the, the section on husbands. And he talks about husbands being yes men to their wives on the decoration of their, their homes. In other words, he's, he's telling husbands, don't micromanage your wife on how she wants her house. This is written in 1627.

Right. And you would expect a Puritan to say, women be yes men. Maybe yes women to your husband, say yes to everything, but he's actually arguing the opposite. Why do you want to have an opinion, a strong opinion about something that actually falls within her sphere? Yeah, paraphrasing the Puritan language, Hey, just go be a blessing to the girl.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. I bet that is a paraphrase. That is a paraphrase.

So, yeah, be a yes person. How did you say it again? You said, try, try to agree. Try hard to agree. Yeah, no, that's really good.

Okay, number four, think the best of one another. Think the best of one another. This is the sort, thinking the worst of one another is one of the greatest sources of grief and relationships at home, in the church, at work, everywhere. I've given a message at the marriage conference on 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, as marriage advice, counsel to marriage partners. And one of the things that I've said in that message is, It's a question.

When was it that your spouse lost the benefit of the doubt? Something strange happens. They always universally got the benefit of the doubt leading up to the marriage, but then you get a few years into marriage and you start seeing things through jaded lenses and it's not right. This spouse that could do no wrong leading up to the altar now, sometimes in a way can do no right. That is not good.

That's not right. Yeah. And we often in our flesh, we put the worst construction on someone's words, by the way, worst construction. I got that terminology from Matthew Henry. He uses it in his commentary pretty regularly about people who put the worst construction upon a statement or something like that.

But you can always interpret anything a couple of different ways. And it's a blessing when people think the best of what you say, rather than trying to nitpick it and just find a reason to say that you have a bad motive for this or you're trying to do something or whatever. But, and that may be true, but it's probably usually not true. Right. And honestly, there's no downside to giving them the benefit of the doubt.

They may in time prove that you were too generous. Which would you rather be stingy with your spouse or too generous? You know instantly when that question is asked, Oh, I would rather be too generous. Yeah. Amen.

Okay. The next one's kind of like it, but, except shortcomings, recognize our fallenness. And what I, what I mean by that is we're all, we're all broken people in different places. And we are fallen creatures. And it's a reality that we should accept in one other.

People are going to goof up. People are going to say things they shouldn't say. People are going to have attitudes they shouldn't have. Welcome to the fallen planet. And we should accept shortcomings.

And I'm not talking about egregious sins and things like that, but just the normal shortcomings, maybe a sharp response or something like that. Just accept that and not, you know, over obsess about shortcomings. It's hard on any relationship when you feel like you're the other person's project. They've taken you on as a project to fix you. So in any relationship, that's true.

Now think of that in the marriage relationship, how toxic that is. Now I'm my life partner's project and it's her job to fix everything about me and nothing is just covered over by love. Nobody wants to be on the other side of that. And nobody can fix everything. Here's a painful reality.

We don't change that much. There are changes, blessed changes, but a lot of the things that Deb and I got married with, we're still the same people being sanctified. But I have patterns that I've had ever since we got married and I lament them actually, especially when I've, I hurt Debra's feelings or something like that. And but the truth, but the truth is we're, we're fallen and we shouldn't, we shouldn't overreact to weaknesses in our spouse. Got that, Deborah?

Okay, number six. Number five, accept shortcomings. Number six, And I think this is a really important one because it has to do with the atmosphere of our home. Deal with disappointment in a healthy way. Deal with disappointment in a healthy way.

You can, you know, you can walk around this life just burdened by the different disappointments that take place. But that's such a weight on a marriage. Yeah. And it's, it's ultimately, it's, It's not our spouse's job to make all our dreams come true. Right, right.

Nor your job to make all their dreams come true. So we are going to meet with disappointments and A lot of that comes from looking to our spouse for things that they were never designed to provide. Yeah. And now you're disappointed because they're not God and not able to provide everything that you need. Here's a great way to look at disappointments.

I must have needed them because God delivered them to me. There is something about the way that I think that needs to be altered by a disappointment. And if you look at what the Bible says about suffering, I mean, when you look at what the Bible says about the sovereignty of God, God is doing all of these things. He in his providence is doing all things well and he uses the fallenness and the disappointments in this life. Whether they're disappointments with jobs, with economies, with in-laws, with friends, you know, even with one another, God is sovereign over all of these things.

And he brings those to us for our good. You have to recognize that. If you don't understand God is sovereign, it's going to be hard to hold your head up. So that takes us to the last one. And I'm just going to say that this last one is really a result of the other six, and that is create a happy home.

Why? Here's why. God's kingdom is a happy kingdom. Jesus Christ is a happy savior. Hebrews 1.9 says he was the happiest of all the disciples because he kept the law of God and he hated lawlessness.

And the kingdom of heaven is a heaven of happiness. It's a kingdom of everlasting happiness. God gave you a home to create a little picture of heaven. And happiness is a big part of heaven. So make sure that your marriage is a happy marriage that creates a happy home.

Every member of the household contributes to the environment of the household, but nobody liked the head of the household. I think we want to look at the camera and say, heads of households, be a pace setter for happiness. You be the happiest one in your home. Don't drag down the other members of your household by always be moping around because things aren't what you hoped they would be. You, you know, turn that on its head and, and, and meet the day with joy.

Yeah. I've said it A million times, maybe a few times. Every wife needs a happy husband, and every husband needs a happy wife. And every child needs a happy marriage. Okay?

Yeah. All right, hey, let me just rehearse, restate. First, learn how to talk. Second, get reconciled quick. Third, be a yes person.

Fourth, think the best of one another. Fifth, accept shortcomings. Sixth, deal with disappointment in a healthy way and create a little piece of heaven through happiness. Yeah. You're giving your children an inheritance.

And I'm not talking about cash when you're dead. Talking about the opportunity to send them into marriage without so much of the baggage that so many people go into marriage with and send them in with just good patterns so that It's actually easy for them to do a lot of things that come hard to a lot of people who come out of these. Happiness is always better than cash. Yes. Okay.

We did it. There you go. Okay. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We'll see you next time. We encourage you to check out ChurchandFamilyLife.com