Christian Family Life

Join us today as we spend some time with Ryan and Marissa Pierce. They share a thought with us that will help us better understand how to cultivate thankfulness in our homes. That phrase is "Water your own Garden".

It is easy to look around and see others "gardens" and think you want that, but in all reality it is because someone is tending their own garden and we need to do the same to ours!! Thankfulness is cultivated, make the investment!

When we understand God's faith principle of provision, we will grasp that our spouse is God's gift to us and because of that we should desire to make sure we are prioritizing them above any other earthly relationship. This attitude will create in us a heart of thankfulness for the person God has brought to us! We would like to thank Ric and Kim Perez for hosting us to record this podcast in their back yard with several couples from the area!!

Thoughts come from many different places. The enemy may tell us lies, which can sometimes be partial truths, luring us into believing them. People may speak things over us, some true and some false.We may have our own thoughts, which can sometimes lead us down rabbit trails, spiraling us downwards. Today our team encourages you to check your head and your heart through the lens of scripture, and allow the Holy Spirit to guide your towards healthy thoughts about your spouse and how to better express those to them.

It is easy to default to the negatives about our spouse! The realities of life can quickly send us down a path that makes us question our relationship and future. One of the best ways to combat this is by being thankful for the good, the bad, and the not so good about your spouse! It allows you to look at your relationship through a lens of faith that can only come through the power of the Holy Spirit. Join us today as we chat about being grateful for your spouse.

Learning to transfer loyalty from your friends to your spouse is not as easy to do, especially if you have life long friends. Today our team talks about making sure our spouse is number one in our relationship and how we need to set healthy boundaries that will help your relationship thrive as well as with the friends you have.

Often the word "Balance" is used to express one's idea of what a healthy life should look like. However, balance actually conveys the idea that everything in our lives should receive equal time and attention, including God. Isn't that contrary to God's Word? Listen in as we answer this question.

Leave and Cleave is an important Biblical principle, but how are we using it? Are we pushing our extended family away or are we creating a bridge that creates a healthy environment that everyone can thrive in and enjoy. Today our CFL team takes the time to talk through boundaries with the in-laws!!

The purpose of boundaries should be to establish health...not create division! Many times boundaries are weaponized to create space for what we want, not necessarily what we need. Listen in today as we encourage you to build boundaries that will also create bridges for healthy relationships.

God's second purpose for marriage is to reproduce a Godly heritage. There are so many negatives that our culture throws at us as couples when it comes to children. "They cost too much", "This world we live in is a mess, why bring children in to it", "Children will be a hinderance to what you want to accomplish". Our goal in this podcast is for you to see it from God's lens. When we do, we will see it is something to celebrate!!

Sally Meredith, co-founder of Christian Family Life, joins us to share what sustained her marriage to Don and the legacy they have left for their children and grandchildren! 54 years of marriage is amazing, but it didn't come without it's challenges. Listen in today as we are encouraged to look to God to sustain our marriage, and the blessings that can flow out of it to impact the next generation

What newlywed couple wants to know what skills will be needed about future events such as child rearing, midlife changes, empty nesters or retirement at the time of their wedding!  Newlyweds have many years to prepare for those occasions!  Well, here we are, now in our 70’s……how did we get here so quickly? Listen in today and be encouraged as Will and Cindy Goff share some rich information on how you can have a vibrant marriage at the beginning and as the years go on!

We are joined today by Zach and Abi Schneider as they share some key elements that they included in their dating, engaged, and now married life to help them begin building a strong foundation that will last a lifetime! Whether you are dating, engaged, or married for 40 plus years, you will be blessed and encouraged by this conversation.

Answering questions like Why Get Married?, Are Compatibility and Good Intentions Enough?, How Can We Live Happily Ever After?, How Can We Cultivate Authentic Intimacy?. Today we just touch the tip of the iceberg as we discuss some foundational truths to help you build a strong marriage, or help you to get back to the basics and help rebuild and strengthen your marriage so you can begin to thrive in it.

Establishing a strong foundation before you even get married is so important. If you are dating or engaged make the time to have the conversations and go through pre-marital counseling to help you with this process. If you are married and have drifted a little, take a listen to Daniel and Rachels as they encourage us with personal stories on how they planned and built this foundation that they continue to build on. It's never to late to be reminded of your early dating days and your love story and hit refresh.

On todays episode we take time to talk about the importance of setting goals. We are fans of living in the moment, but also believe that you need to pray over and communicate your dreams and goals. It is a great practice to help you define your marriage mission statement that God has given both of you and how you will execute it. Join us as we discuss this important topic.

Reed Crosson from Ron Blue Trust ronblue.com, shares some practical financial advice that you and your spouse can implement that will help relieve some of the tensions your marriage may be feeling.

Today we spend time with Reed Crosson of Ron Blue Trust (https://www.ronblue.com). In the first part of a two part interview, Reed helps us understand the purpose of money and how we can implement that into our marriage. Reed shares that money is a tool, a test, and a testimony! Great information that will greatly impact your marriage in a positive way!

Celebrating milestones in life are important! Today our CFL team has some fun celebrating a ministry milestone of 100 episodes for the Christian Family Life Podcast. Listen in and enjoy!

We are conditioned to believe that nothing good can come from a trial. In todays episode we discuss what scripture says about trials and how we can look at them from a different perspective. Dare we say even as a blessing.

Conflict within a marriage cannot be avoided. Scripture tells us not to be surprised (1 Peter 4:12) when trials come our way. How we communicate within those trials with our spouse will either help or hurt the situation. It is important to take the time to understand your go to style of communication and ask the questions, why do I communicate in that way? Do I need to change the way I communicate with my spouse?

Marriage communication problems were sited as the most common factor leading to divorce. How you communicate is such a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to your marriage health. We need to humble ourselves and honestly search the heart to figure out why we communicate the way we do! Is there something within my heart that is influencing the way I communicate to my spouse? Today we go to the basics of how to get to healthy communication!

Gray and Shelly Foshee share with us how important it is to invest in other marriages. By doing so, the Foshee, were able to notice how much of an impact it had on their own marriage. This is a good reminder to not keep your relationship isolated from others, but find ways to care for, help, and encourage other couples, as well as, receive from others. Using the resource "Two Becoming One" was a great tool for them to do just that! For more info on how you can be a marriage discipler check out christianfamilylife.com

Join us today as we talk with with Gray and Shelly Foshee and hear their story of redemption that has fueled them to become marriage missionaries. It's amazing what God can do when we think there is nothing that can help. Gray and Shelly are excited about continuing to share what God has done in their marriage with so many others.

LeWayne and Yasmine Young share with us the ups and downs of marriage and how they leaned on God to give them hope in the midst of navigating a blended family!! Often times we believe the lies that we have no hope and nothing will ever change, or this is too hard!! We hope that the Youngs story will encourage you to believe that in Christ there is always hope and redemption!!

Join us on todays podcast as we interview Lewayne and Yasmine Young about the tensions in your marriage that come from a blended family. LeWayne and Yasmine help us understand the term Remerge and what that looks like when two families come together.

Many people ask us, what is the best piece of advice you can give us to make our marriage better? Our answer today is very different than if we were to have answered this question 20 plus years ago. Listen in as we share what we believe to be great advice to help strengthen you marriage and for it to thrive.

Freedom to love and accept your spouse is based on your relationship with God!! Letting God's love and forgiveness for you (The Gospel) flow through you to others starting right in your own home with your spouse! Pray for each other and pray that the Holy Spirit help you move your marriage from performance to faith. Check out our resource "Two Becoming One" for more insight to this topic. https://www.christianfamilylife.com/cfl-store/

"I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left them." Andy Bernard said this in "The Office". God not only has purpose for your marriage as well as providing us our personal perfect provision, but God wants us to truly enjoy your marriage! Be reminded of the good times, enjoy the rewards and milestones that come with staying married. Get through the difficult times to see your marriage strengthened on the other side!! Join us as we are reminded of the good old days and start creating new ones!

Sex is one of the most common marriage issues (for example, nearly 80% of couples are mismatched in how often they want it), but it doesn't have to be that way. Listen in as we continue our talk with Dr. Michael Sytsma!

Today our CFL team sits down with ordained minister, licensed professional counselor, certified sex therapist, professor, and national speaker Dr. Michael Sytsma. Dr. Sytsma has over 30 years of clinical experience in sex therapy and he founded Building Intimate Marriages, Inc. He is also co-founder of Sexual Wholeness, Inc. and co-author of the book we are discussing today, "Secrets of Sex & Marriage: 8 Surprises That Make All the Difference.

Join us on this second part of our conversation with Shaunti Feldhahn, co-author of "Secrets of Sex & Marriage". Shaunti shares with us some insightful thoughts and introduces a few of the 8 surprises that make all the difference when it comes to sex and your marriage.

Today we interview Shaunti Feldhahn who is a bestselling author, social researcher, podcaster, with a graduate degree from Harvard. Join us in this first episode of the two-part interview as we discuss her findings on why we are not on the same page in our sex life.

When we talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of marriage, we point at the ugly and define it through he lens of sin!!  the Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?  Join is as we chat about the effects of sin in your marriage and how, by pointing to scripture, we can work on moving towards the good and even the best of marriage.

Today we will touch on 3 more connection killers that are pretty prevalent in marriages.  Hopefully this chat will help us sit and discuss these past six types of connection killers we have talked about and come up with a game plan to avoid them!!

Do you remember those early days of dating and marriage?  You were always thinking about each other, romance was alive and well, things were hot!  What happened? Why did the connection stop?  What connection killers are you allowing into your marriage?  Join us as we discuss 3 types of connection killers in this first of two podcasts!

Our CFL team was out in Snohomish, WA and our topic of discussion was Physical/Sexual Intimacy.  We bring this important topic to the podcast to encourage each of you to have the discussion an go through the questions that we pose in this segment!

Last week we talked about being Spiritually healthy with the Lord and allowing that to spill over into your relationships, starting with your spouse.  We believe that as we become more Spiritually healthy it will begin to open the doors for emotional health within our marriage.  Join in on the conversation as we talk about having an emotionally healthy marriage.

Spiritual Intimacy between husband and wife truly is a spillover of your personal relationship with the Lord.  The closer we each grow in our walk with Jesus, the closer we will be to each other.  Today we talk about the importance of spiritual intimacy in your marriage.

Discover what you may need to help you heal so that you can strengthen your relationships around you.  We've heard the phrase, "healed people heal people, hurt people hurt people", listen in today as Buffy Wimmer, from Collaborative Counseling, speaks into the healing process in this second part of our conversation on mental health.

Today we are joined, for a two part podcast, by Buffy Wimmer from Collaborative Counseling Group!  Buffy will help us, in the first part, how to identify and understand trauma, whether it is big T trauma or little t trauma!  This is such a great conversation to be had by all of us to better understand what we are truly dealing with and how to Biblically work through it to produce healthy relationships!

Kina Scott and Lisa Adam continue to give us amazing nuggets in the area of mental health and its affect on relationships.  Being aware of symptoms like withdrawal, isolation, lack of communication and so much more, as well as creating a vulnerable environment within the home to have the conversations and removing the fear of getting help are what we will tackle today!! 

We continue our conversation this month on mental health and it's affect on relationships.  Today we are joined by Kina Scott and Lisa Adams with New Phase Christian Counseling & Restoration Center on this two part series talking about Mental Health as a whole, symptoms to be looking for, erasing the stigma of mental health, and the role of the community and church.  

Our CFL team into what 2023 will look like for our podcast.  We start off the year takling about mental health and how it affects your relationships, starting with your marriage.  We look forward to interviewing experts in this area over the next few weeks to help us navigate and have victory over mental health struggles.

As we close out 2022 we are grateful for what God has done in marriages in communities, churches, and countries around the world.  Today we highlight some of our favorite moments of 2022!!  Thank you for faithfully listening and for supporting the work of Christian Family Life!!

During the hustle and bustle, we encourage you to take time to connect with your spouse. Today we discuss the importance of pursuing emotional intimacy with the Lord and your spouse as you invest in everyone else during the holidays.