Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast

Episode 153 | Is It Time to Wake Up?

• Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger

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Sometimes everything is not exactly what it seems. Yes, you could be tired and irritable, your spouse could have gotten a bad night's sleep, your neighbor could be being snarky, and your work situation could be just people not getting along. But at other times, it's possible that there is something more going on just below the surface.  How much of our world is simply challenging or difficult and how much of our world is negative and disappointment that comes as a result of living on a battlefield between good and evil. Could our marriages, our families and our faith be constantly under assault by a dark force that doesn't want us to choose God and love others? 

Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as Travis shares a very real and raw story about how God used a negative experience to bring a deeper level of spiritual awakening to his faith. This experience taught them to be even more aware of spiritual landmines and the strategy of the enemy and to fight even harder to protect their marriage and faith! This is a powerful episode that is sure to encourage you to fight to be closer to God!

Travis and Dawn Rosinger are the Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast Hosts and Authors of the books, Verbalosity - 7 Steps to a Verbally Generous and More Fulfilling Marriage and their newest book, Gripping -  What Matters Most | A Life and Relationships That Hold on to You

For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight

Travis Rosinger:

Fun. That's exactly what I think of. What I think of we get to hang out together again. We're so glad that you are here. Welcome to the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

Hey everyone, so excited to be with you today Again. I say this often, but this is one of our favorite days of the week and that's just because we get to be with you all.

Travis Rosinger:

It really is, and it's something special to be able to stop and think about all the important things of life. I mean, life gets so busy and crazy and if we don't stop and really ponder and consider how valuable relationships are that God has given us, but also the truth of His word man, we're going to miss so much. We're going to miss the moments that God has blessed us with.

Dawn Rosinger:

You know what life is, travis? Life is school, and it's full of lessons, both good both bad. And every time we just open our eyes and stop, man, we can see so many things, and it's either through stories or just through conversations, or through opening up the Bible or just different things that are happening in our life, and just taking those and going, wow, we learned so much from that. And so that's what this episode is about. Today, we are excited to share something with you, just a story, just something that we, you know had happened to us, but then also just encourage you along the way.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh, completely, and I love that. You said life is school. I didn't know where you were going to go with that, but it's so true. I mean, life has so much to teach us and really God uses the experiences or the people in our lives to teach us profound things, but he's mostly speaking through His word, the Bible. Well, I want to throw myself under the bus. You and I, donald, a long time ago, had fallen in love and we were starting to date. You were had just turned 16 and I guess maybe you were 16 and a half seven seven by then.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, I had to be 16 to date.

Travis Rosinger:

So I was 16. Yeah, that's true, that's true, and I was, I think, 18. I'd gotten a new car. Oh my gosh, it was gorgeous. It wasn't brand new, it was new to me and new to me too.

Dawn Rosinger:

compared to what we had previously, or people were driving, it was a nice car.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it was so nice, it was shiny. I was young, I was in love with you, in love with my car. I bought really big tires, expensive tires, to put on my car and so we would go out on these dates and I think we were dating maybe two times a week, something like that. We'd see each other at church and youth group on weekends. But I was working a job at the time where I'd wake up literally at 4, 4.30 in the morning and I would. We'd go on a date sometimes during the week where I had to work the next day and I would drop you off at like 11 or midnight and I had to wake up at 4, 4.30 in the morning.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, we definitely weren't getting as much sleep as we probably should have compared to what we get now, but we're just enjoying life, enjoying being together, and apparently I thought sleep was optional and there were some nights.

Travis Rosinger:

I just stayed up all night, I kind of wish.

Dawn Rosinger:

it was optional. That'd be great. We'd have so much more time, wouldn't that?

Travis Rosinger:

be great, That'd be amazing. Well, one night I dropped you off after a really fun long date and I headed home. Now I had to go I think at that time, about 50 miles to get home you did.

Dawn Rosinger:

yep, it was a long drive. We lived quite a distance from each other.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and I remember heading home, but it was funny because I couldn't remember certain parts of the trip. I would suddenly I would be here or I'd be there, and I knew I was, you know, getting a little bit tired. And then it happened All of a sudden everything went black and I felt so good I mean, I was just relaxed and comfortable and warm and it was all black. And that's when I realized suddenly that I was flying through the air, like actually flying through the air and I opened my eyes and I saw this huge sign. I was flying past it. It was an exit sign and I had essentially, at 60 miles an hour, drifted off the road and went up into the air about maybe 15 feet in the air because there was a drop off on the other side of this exit. And I'm flying through the air. I land on the ground and the wheels on my car immediately were bent out and then the whole side of my car got completely creamed out. It was completely creamed.

Travis Rosinger:

It was horrible.

Dawn Rosinger:

You had just bought it, not that long ago, and it's funny. I have to go back and you kept saying it was black. And the reason it was black at that moment is because your eyes were closed, right, travis. That's why you were relaxed. That's why it was black, because you couldn't see anything, because you closed your eyes and you fell asleep.

Travis Rosinger:

That's exactly it, and that's the funny thing is I fell asleep and when the car hit the ground, the wheels were bent, my brand new tires were shredded to nothing and the whole side of my car destroyed. It was totaled.

Dawn Rosinger:

You know, what's funny is actually it was only the whole right side of your car. When you looked at your car from the other side, it looked great it looked perfect. When you went around, you're like oh my lord, what happened to your car?

Travis Rosinger:

Well, it never drove the same after that it did.

Dawn Rosinger:

It drove really badly. You had to keep driving it because that's all you had.

Travis Rosinger:

It was horrible, embarrassing, and then I just got rid of it. But I tell that story because here's the funny thing I was cruising along and, like you mentioned on, I didn't realize I had fallen asleep Right, I was just suddenly in darkness and feeling good and relaxed and going, oh, this is so nice. And then I woke up and I'm flying through the air destroying, demolishing my beautiful car that was worth a lot of money to an 18-year-old kid.

Travis Rosinger:

Anyway, the whole point of that story is that we kind of had or I kind of had a similar experience recently and I want to explain it like this Now with our cars.

Dawn Rosinger:

No, a different type of similar experience Didn't drive off. Our cars are in great shape.

Travis Rosinger:

Didn't drive off the edge of a you know a big old jump on off the road or into a house or a business or anything like that. No, but the reason why I tell the story is because, in the same way, recently I realized that I had been asleep, spiritually, maybe for quite a while. Now I want to clarify this. It wasn't anything like I was into addiction or doing all these bad things or you know what was completely out of control in my life.

Dawn Rosinger:

Or not spending time with God. You're still reading God's word, praying everything you were just in certain areas of your life, maybe not aware.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and that's really what it comes down to is suddenly I realized I had fallen asleep in a very specific area of my life and it was as if I suddenly woke up. So how did I wake up? You know? How did I suddenly realize that? How did that happen? Well, recently we experienced an event in our lives and it came out of nowhere, kind of T-boned us. It was an unexpected conflict that just kind of occurred right there in the middle of our lives and we couldn't do anything about it. We, we couldn't get further into it and we couldn't get away from it.

Dawn Rosinger:

We couldn't run away, one of those things you're not looking for, and that it comes in and it finds you and you're like, oh well, now we're in the middle of it, yeah.

Travis Rosinger:

And Jesus warned us about that. He said in this life you will have trouble right. And so this is just something that came looking for us. We didn't do anything wrong, it wasn't illegal, it wasn't bad, again, nothing weirder or crazy. But we could just sense that we were suddenly in a deep place of conflict that we didn't cause, but we were.

Travis Rosinger:

We were in the middle of that, watching it take place, and so I was so personally just disturbed by this conflict. I thought, man, nobody did anything to cause it, nobody was being bad or rude or mean. But how did it happen? And so I spent the next 24 to 36 hours just praying, like I've never prayed before and asking God, god, would you intervene in this conflict? Would you help us out in this moment? And you know what God did.

Travis Rosinger:

It wasn't instantaneous, it took a few hours, but he did, and things started to get better. But you know, it wasn't until several weeks, or maybe even a month later after this event, that I started to realize you know, kind of as I was doing an autopsy in my mind of of what had happened in that event, during that conflict that this emotionally draining and this disturbing event that I suddenly started to realize that it was orchestrated by evil. And it's become much clearer to me now that that that event on that you and I experienced together that it was deep spiritual warfare that evil had sent its demons to come wreak havoc in our lives. And I say that metaphorically and I say that literally, but it's so cool because our pastor recently began a message series on darkness.

Dawn Rosinger:

Oh, it was amazing. Series just reminding us that we are in a battle and that we need to be ready to fight and stand up against the evil one. And there are so many good scriptures and just an excellent teaching that it actually helped even open our eyes a little bit more.

Travis Rosinger:

It was so timely. And let's be honest in life, being married, you know, and trying to make a difference in the world is hard enough. And then when evil comes along and attacks us and maybe we're not prepared for it, maybe we've fallen a little bit asleep to evil's, you know strategies or what it's trying to do, and then it can really knock us off our feet. So why would I think that this event was caused by evil, while it's brought back to the scripture in the New Testament, 1 Peter 5.8, says be alert and of sober mind. And that means awake, sober mind.

Travis Rosinger:

Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking for someone to devour. And here's what it says. It gives us great advice. It says resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And so this is telling us that there is a very real spiritual battle and there's an enemy. He's not asleep, he's not just kind of hanging out eating something. It says he's prowling around like a roaring lion, looking. So he's prowling and he's looking. But I love how this passage ends. It says and the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ. After you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen. And what does that mean? It means we don't have to fear evil. It means that we don't have to sit there and be tiboned constantly by evil or or prowled upon, that we are victorious, that Jesus is our strength, that God is on our side.

Dawn Rosinger:

I like in the beginning of first Peter 5a that says be alert. And sometimes, when we are just honestly not in that mode where we're our minds fully aware we're not alert, then are we sleeping? I mean, if we're not alert, then what you know, what are we doing with our mind at that moment? Where are we? Are we just not focusing on the right things? I mean, where is our focus at that point?

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and is it possible that sometimes we're dozing off, we're not in a full sleep, but we're not a spiritually awake. And when I say spiritually awake I don't mean you know that somebody has walked away from God or they're in darkness, but they're not awake to what the evil one is trying to do when he tries to attack Christians. So in John 1010, jesus warned us about that. He said the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But Jesus says I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. And that's what Jesus wants for your marriage, for your relationship with God, for your relationship with your children, for every aspect of your life that you would have life, and life to the full.

Dawn Rosinger:

And it's cool to know that Jesus is actually saying those words. He said the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy that. What does that mean? That means that there is a thief that's coming trying to destroy our lives and we need to be aware, we need to be alert, we need to be ready to fight against the evil one.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, come straight from the mouth of Jesus.

Travis Rosinger:

Well, this whole event it caused me to wake up from, like I said, a type of spiritual slumber, one that I would describe as not proactively fighting evil enough in my life in a spiritual warfare sense, the way that I should have been, and so again, I was allowing evil to kind of ambush me every now and then, instead of actively and authoritatively going after every form of evil in my life and the kind of evil that tries to sneak in and sabotage our marriage or sabotage the love that we have for Jesus, and then just commanding it to stay away and to leave.

Travis Rosinger:

So what I'm trying to say is God's just opened my eyes even more than he ever has before, and he's allowed me to see that not everything, but much of the struggles that we face as Christians, and then we're trying to pursue God. It's not just life happening or something difficult, and a lot of times we say, well, that's life, and I would often think that to myself. But I now have a deeper understanding that there's a huge percentage of what we kind of just equate to the difficulties of life are actually spiritual attacks. Yeah, that's true. They're launched against us because of our faith or because we haven't done what James said, that we just read a little bit ago resisted Him enough and we haven't been standing solid enough in our faith.

Dawn Rosinger:

This is so relevant to just life and especially marriage, because oftentimes things will happen in our marriage or between us and we instantly want to look at each other as the enemy. And the Bible even says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities of this dark world. Travis, you are not my enemy, you are my spouse. The enemy is the evil that's trying to pull us apart in our marriage, get us actually fighting against each other rather than fighting against the evil one, and so many times we just need to stop and be aware of man. This is something more. This is something that we know that we have the power and the ability to fight against. And let's do it.

Travis Rosinger:

Let's stand up together and fight against this, yeah, and most of the time, it's prayer, it's going to God, it is yep, it's God's word, but I think it's instead of fighting each other. It's you know where we're facing each other and fighting each other, accusing each other. In our marriage, it's going back to back and protecting each other and having each other's backs. So here are some things that I learned personally through this situation. Don, feel free to chime in as well anything that you would want to add, but here's some things that I've just walked away with and I wanted to share them with you guys today. Here's the first one.

Travis Rosinger:

Like it or not, everyone everyone is in the middle of a spiritual war. Right now. Again, evil is fighting to destroy your marriage, your family and your life. And if you're actually in a real battle I've been thinking about this a lot or you're in a war the moment you wake up in the morning.

Travis Rosinger:

If you're in a war, if you're a soldier, you've got to ask yourself wait a second, where is the enemy? Why? Because you don't want to die and you want to do a great job. You want to win the war. So in a real war, you don't lose sight of the enemy or lose track of the enemy because he's going to sneak up on you, he'll pounce on you. But soldiers in a real war want to live, so they keep their eyes and their ears open to the tricks of the enemy. And that's what Jesus was kind of pointing to when he said in Matthew 26, 41, watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Here's what Jesus is getting at the evil. One can use your flesh. We all have weak flesh, and temptation is often the kind of inroad, the platform that evil uses to kind of sneak into our lives. And so Jesus is saying, hey, watch and pray.

Dawn Rosinger:

As you were talking, I kept thinking of this song that I learned in Sunday school as a kid, and money maybe have heard this song, but it's just that I'm in the Lord's army and the words are I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery, I may never fly with the enemy, but I'm in the Lord's army. Yes, sir, like we are soldiers in God's army and we are fighting in this enemy, and so, as you were just sharing that, I'm like man, that song kept kind of playing in my mind and I love it. Yes, sir, I'm in the Lord's army.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, that's so funny. That's a blast from the past.

Travis Rosinger:

I remember shouting yes, sir, that's absolutely hilarious. Well, and we know the Bible says don't be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, and that's how we a huge part of how we fight. Another thing that I feel like I've really learned from this situation, and God's taught me, is that sin isn't bad because it's bad. It's bad because it's spiritually dangerous and leads to spiritual bondage. It's bad because on the other side of that temptation, most often not every time, but most often is an evil force that wants you to give in once, in a little small compromising sort of way, and then again, and then again, and then again, you see it's not going after your soul all at one time. Evil is patient and it will take its time slowly creeping into your life so that eventually it can capture you, At least your attention, but potentially your soul.

Dawn Rosinger:

It's as simple as this. It's kind of like eating one doughnut is not bad for you, but if you eat a donut a day and it leads to gluttony and it leads to extra weight, then that's bad, that becomes bad. But the one donut itself is just almost like a doorway to a downward spiral.

Travis Rosinger:

I couldn't agree more. I heard a pastor recently talk about how when you eat a lot of junk food, you want to eat a lot more junk food, but when you eat a lot of healthy food, you actually start to like crave more like kale or carrots or whatever, and I forget who said that, but that's so, so true.

Travis Rosinger:

You know, there's another profound thing that just kind of hit me through this all as well, and that is this that sin is a spiritual appetite suppressant, and it came through. I was listening to a message recently by Timothy Keller and I believe he almost said that verbatim, but it hit me like a ton of bricks that we certainly want to fight against evil through prayer and asking God for help, through reading the Bible, that time alone with God, with other Christians that build us up. But we want to say no to sin right, because Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. So sin is a quick, cheap meal that becomes a replacement for the real spiritual food that God has for you. God wants to give you the bread of life, and so you will naturally want less of God the more you give into sin. In the same way, the more you fight evil and pursue God's righteousness, the more you'll want God's goodness in your life.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yes, absolutely. The more you get to know God, the more you want to know him, because evil wants to use your flesh. So it might be smart to believe that when you give into sin, you're actually giving into evil.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, that's a strange connection, but I think I think it's powerful, I think it's important to say no. I don't want to give in to evil, even though this could just be a temptation of a weak moment, and my flesh and evil has nothing to do Like. I just don't even want to go down that road.

Dawn Rosinger:

I don't want to figure it out. Run for it.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, go the other way.

Travis Rosinger:

And I think another big piece, a huge walk away from me, is this is that offense is one of the biggest ways that evil tries to creep into a Christian's life.

Travis Rosinger:

It's just something I've been realizing over and over again in the last month. It can be an offense against your spouse in your marriage, or it can be an offense against someone outside of your home, but when we allow offenses to live in our hearts, we keep a wall up that literally a wall that holds the love of God and a deep desire to serve others away from us as a person, and so an offense can cause us actually. So if Satan can get you to walk around with offenses inside of you for the rest of your life, he's going to shut you down. He's going to shut down your joy, your love, the power of God in you, and he's actually going to keep you from being the person that God has called you to be, and so it's so important to get rid of the offense. You won't be able to complete the mission that God has put you on this planet to accomplish, and you'll just be too angry and frustrated.

Dawn Rosinger:

This weekend I officiated a wedding in the bride mentioned to the groom during the premarital portion of as we're getting ready for their wedding and she said we will never, ever, ever go to bed mad.

Travis Rosinger:

And I just thought you know they're a younger couple and they're just the nicest couple.

Dawn Rosinger:

But I'm like that's so cool that you already see that, like you're not going to have this offensive against each other and just try to fall asleep. And even in Ephesians 426, it says do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. There was something wise in that, in that young bride, when she said that because when we go to bed and we have this offense or this anger, we're actually giving the devil a foothold. We're inviting him almost into our marriage and our life. At that moment we need to just stop and forgive and let that offense go.

Travis Rosinger:

Completely, don. Well, the reason why we're going through some of these things that we're talking about is because part of my spiritual awakening was just opening my eyes to these things that I needed to be reminded of. I don't want to forget these things. These are too important for my life, for my marriage, for my family. Here's the thing. I don't want to spend time alone with God because it's a good idea just to be spiritually healthy. No, I want to let it come from a deep desire to know God, to love him and to stay alive spiritually.

Travis Rosinger:

I mean, jesus said man will not live on bread alone, but in every word that comes from the mouth of God he was quoting the Old Testament. But think about bread. I love bread. I had a huge sandwich today, don, and we had some fresh bread in the house and what I realized is bread will keep you alive, it'll fill you up, it's healthy, it's got fiber and that's what Jesus was connecting the dots between bread and God's words. The words of God will keep you alive spiritually and will also allow you to grow spiritual muscle. We need spiritual muscle for our lives for our marriage.

Dawn Rosinger:

And the only way to get spiritual muscles honestly is to spend time with God, in God's word, getting to know God and just spending time in prayer and having that intimacy, that relationship with God. Keep building it.

Travis Rosinger:

And doing it from desire, from love. The cool thing about God is that he allows us to use our free will to follow him. But sin pulls us into slavery, it pulls us into bondage, and so I think a big piece of it and we've done this in our home when our kids were growing up. But just demolishing any kind of idols that are in our lives, and even in myself personally, like I don't want my career or our money or anything else to become an idol or a distraction, that's more important than God. And in John 5.21, it says dear children, keep yourselves from idols. And it's just this encouragement to watch your life so that we can do what James said. You know, standing firm in our faith.

Dawn Rosinger:

Last night, we had a discussion me and you were just talking about idols and just wanting to make sure that there wasn't anything in our life that shouldn't be, and we just decided to like, hey, what does it mean to have an idol? What does that look like? And, honestly, anything that takes a place of God is an idol. So that can be people, that can be things, that can be your job, that can be just so many different things, but we want to make sure that there is nothing in that connection between us and God. We want it to be crystal clear. So, man, we are just totally focused on.

Travis Rosinger:

God, yeah, and the best part about that is then we get the fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control. We're focused on God. He gives us the good things. So, guys, I wanted to get vulnerable. I just wanted to share this with you. God's opened my eyes even more and just becoming more aware of the devil schemes and having that victory, that strength in our life that Jesus brings. So what about you? Are you actively fighting or are you just living life unknowingly, becoming a casualty in a war between good and evil? Don't fall asleep, no, don't, don't doze off. What do you need to do to become more spiritually awake? I am digging into the Bible.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, you are, it's great, poor Don.

Travis Rosinger:

I feel bad for you. I've been reading my Bible like crazy lately, listening to messages from other pastors and just praying, like just spending time with Jesus.

Dawn Rosinger:

I honestly just think. The first step is to recognize that we actually are in a battle and if we want to fight and win, we have to recognize there is an enemy fighting against us and man. Let's charge him, let's go after him. Don't allow anything into our life that is separating us from God in any way, but then also making us so we can't fight and be strong in battle.

Travis Rosinger:

Totally agree, don Well. Hey, we want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

Remember, guys, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight. We'll see you next time.