In honor of the NEW book launched by Phylicia and her friend, Lisa Jacobson, this week Josh and Phy talk about FLIRTATION! Is it wrong? What happens when we’re told flirtation is wrong and then get married? How did Phylicia’s 30 day flirtation experiment on Josh turn into a book??
Marriage and family take place within the larger family of Christ’s church. Church is not just a building or a dutiful Sunday attendance; it is a community of faith and accountability, and for marrieds, a support system and place to serve. Churches are made up of imperfect people and are therefore imperfect institutions, but it is within our church family that our marriages have a place to thrive.
For years it seemed like Josh and I could not come up for air. During engagement, Josh struggled to find a job after college. The job he found was unpredictable and kept him on the road every day, sometimes away for a week or more at a time. Once we were married, not much changed. We found out we were pregnant on our first anniversary and from then on experienced a succession of job changes, losses, financial set backs, out of state moves, more babies, moving again, starting a business – it just didn’t end.Â
If you’ve ever perused the Facebook comments on a popular Christian page, you know exactly why I’m writing this article. Facebook comment threads are a window into raw humanity, are they not? And this is true of all social media, not just Christian pages! So why do Christian commenters seem no different from their unbelieving associates? The attitude, tone, and name-calling is exactly the same – maybe with a few less swears. It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to say: Something isn’t right.
We’re told that having kids can be the death knell of a marriage. We’re told kids can ruin, wreck or render painful a relationship otherwise well preserved. But the truth is that kids don’t ruin marriages; they reveal them. Serving the children God blesses us with will expose our patterns of sin and selfishness, things we were better able to brush under the rug without little humans around. In this episode of the Honest Marriage series on Verity Podcast, Josh and Phy talk about how parenting changes marriage, how they get on the same page, and how to communicate about parenting decisions (especially in the little years).