Military Wellness Collective

EP 48: A Healthy Marriage Book Starts with Scripture; Choosing Marriage Books Wisely

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A “Christian marriage book” can either deepen your marriage or quietly train you to read the Bible poorly. We sit down at the table as two military ministry couples who have been married for over two decades to answer a listener’s question: how do young couples find a healthy marriage book when there are thousands of options and so many strong opinions?

We start where we think every marriage conversation has to start: Scripture. We talk through why biblical literacy is not optional for military couples who want to thrive, not just survive, and we point you to the passages that shape a Christian definition of marriage, including Genesis 1 to 3 and Ephesians 5. Then we get practical about context: how to ask, “Who’s the author, who’s the audience, who is speaking, and what is happening?” so you do not build your marriage on ripped out verses or confident sounding takes.

From there, we share the filters we use when choosing any marriage resource: author background, intended audience, copyright date, and author intent. We also name common traps, like assuming a general marriage book addresses abuse or other serious outliers or letting nitpicky reviews and social media clips tell you what a writer “must have meant.” Finally, we talk about the role of community and why wise couples, pastors, and counseling may be the most loving next step when the normal habits are not lifting you out of a hard season.

If you found this helpful, subscribe, share it with a military couple you care about, and leave a review so more families can find the show. What marriage question should we tackle next?

Connect with us at hello@militarywellnesscollective.com

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Welcome And The Listener Question

SPEAKER_03

Hey, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of the Military Wellness Collective. I'm Brittany Brown, and we are really excited to have you guys back with us today. If you're a new friend here, we welcome you. We're excited that you found us. We'd love to hear from you, or if you want to leave a review or pass us along if you like what you hear. And if you are an old friend, welcome back. So it is summertime and we have other people here with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no one is here today. Just kidding. I'm gonna go opposite today. We're no, that's weird. It sounds weird, it feels weird. I can't say we're and not introduce you. This is Joshua, my husband. He's here with us.

SPEAKER_02

I am here.

SPEAKER_03

Yep, we're excited. Thanks, Joshua, for being here. So much fun.

SPEAKER_00

Kelly wrote her name down on her paper.

SPEAKER_03

I'm a doodler.

SPEAKER_00

So that she remembers her name. I doodled.

SPEAKER_03

I love it. And then so we're joined with Kelly and Brian O'Day.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yep, that's who that is. Good friends. And we all serve in full-time ministry. Brian and Kelly are at Pillar Church of Jacksonville, right outside of Camp Lejeune, or Camp Lejeune, however you want to say that. Marine Corps base in North Carolina. Joshua and I are at Pillar Church of Topsell, outside this same base. And I guess New River Air Station is here too, so we can't forget those folks.

SPEAKER_00

Don't forget that. Sorry. Sorry. Stones Bay. Yep. And Marine Special Operations people.

SPEAKER_03

Yep, we got a lot of people over here, and we're excited about that. But a fun unique thing that we have if you're new joining us is we have all been married for over 20 years. So Brian and Kelly have been married for 22. 22. 22. And Joshua and I have been married for 23, and we have all done military active service. Brian and Kelly, 10 years active duty, and then retired out of the reserves, correct?

unknown

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Is that correct? And then Joshua retired after 20 years. It'll be four years ago here at the end of the summer. So when we're talking about military wellness and what that looks like for families and life, uh, we're passionate about it. We've lived it, and now we are ministering in military communities to these young families. Our average age demographic is probably you. You're probably somewhere between the ages of 18 to 26. Maybe you're a little bit older. And we feel really ancient, but we're only in our early 40s. So didn't you say one of us or mid 40s?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I think I saw the stat recently that half of our active duty military is married.

SPEAKER_03

It's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Which is the highest it's ever been.

SPEAKER_03

I love that.

SPEAKER_01

Because when we first joined, it was like a small fraction of all the units of a growing fraction. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So we love all you young married couples out there, and we want to help you thrive in this military life, not just survive. And so today's episode is a listener question. So if you're listening right now, we want to talk about things you want us to talk about. So this faithful listener emailed us at our email address, and you can do that too at hello at military wellness collective.com. I always want to say it wrong.

SPEAKER_00

Hello at military wellness collective.com.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm gonna You can also send encouragement. We like encouragement.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We can send hate too. We just might not look at it as hate.

SPEAKER_03

Oh my goodness. Okay, so this is the question from our listener. How would you recommend young couples or marriages in need of help find a healthy book? So I'm gonna read this again. How would you recommend young couples or marriages in need of help find a healthy book? And this listener went on to mention a couple books in his email, but we're just gonna hit this topic today. How would you recommend young couples or marriages in need of help find a healthy book? This is something I love to talk about because I love to read.

SPEAKER_00

We recommend books most episodes.

SPEAKER_03

We love to read, uh, first and foremost is the Bible. We recommend the Bible. So if you're in need of help, the Bible. But guys, read and listen.

Bible First For Marriage Help

SPEAKER_01

Because quite honestly, I love audible. I love listening to the city.

SPEAKER_03

I know you're an auditory processor. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_00

So the first thing we want to say is the Bible. Go to God's word. Whatever the so, generally speaking, we want to encourage you to have a discipline, a habit of regularly reading the Bible for yourself, working up to the point where you are reading the whole Bible. Amen. So that way you're getting things in their context, you are reading paragraphs at a time, chapters at a time, books at a time, to just understand how the Bible's put together and how the Bible works. So regular rhythm of Bible reading generally. Then when a topic comes up like marriage, how should I think about being a husband? How should I think about being a wife? How should I think about marriage? We need some like generally there's some go-to passages. So if you were to read five books on Christian marriage, they're all going to talk about a few passages of God's word. And we need to make sure we know those passages and what they say. I would argue before you start reading other books about it, or if you go the other way, just make sure when they mention a passage, if that's an unfamiliar passage to you, go read that. Like stop reading the book, stop listening to the book, and go go read or listen to those passages in context. In their context. And so let me just give you some of those. Genesis chapters one through three are the foundation of everything. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In his image and likeness, God created man and woman. Therefore, a man, Genesis 2 24, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

SPEAKER_01

For the purposes of being fruitful and multiplying.

SPEAKER_00

And filling the earth. So Genesis chapters 1 through 3. And then in chapter 3, it all goes bad and it's not good. So except God marriage is good before. But marriage is good. Yeah. So and then Ephesians 5 is probably the most go-to. Like, hey, what is this supposed to actually look like? It's the Apostle Paul's longest explanation about marriage. And then Jesus talks about marriage actually very briefly, but when he does, he quotes Genesis 2. And in Paul's explanation of marriage, he quotes Genesis 2. And so you've got to start in Genesis chapters 1 through 3. You have to see the first marriage and Moses' commentary on the first marriage, and then Jesus' brief explanations about marriage, and then the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5. So we've got to start with scripture. Before we talk about any other book, we have to start with scripture. And we want to have a right interpretation and understanding of scripture. Yes.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. That's good.

SPEAKER_01

Can I ask a question then?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So what are some of the things that even when maybe even before we dive into scripture or as we're diving into scripture, what are some things that we should be paying attention to as we read it in order to understand the context?

SPEAKER_03

One can I say something to that really quick?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I think being cautious of what framework you're bringing to the Bible. And when I say that, I mean we all come to the Word of God with our own ideas and thoughts and what other people have said to us. We have our own framework. And uh we tend to overlay that over scripture and then want scripture to lend and lay within our framework. And we need to lay our framework aside and have the word of God transform us so that our framework shifts and they match. That is something I think is really big. And I say that from a place of I used to be like the Apostle Paul Center, number one, laying my own framework over scripture.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, like we come, we come to the scripture with goggles on, and we actually have to train ourselves and allow God to show us how to read his scriptures. So, like one thing one first thing is like who's the author and who's the audience? Like, what is happening? What's being said? One passage I go to regularly for this in is it reads like this. I'll read it and then we'll do a little work with it. And he said to him, All these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me. What are our first questions? Who's the he and the him and the he and the him and the you, right? Right. And what are we talking about here? Right. That that passage is really meaningless by itself. Yeah. Because I just I've got a lot of questions about pronouns and what are we talking about? Well, if you dive into it, it's pretty simple because this is a narrative, so this one's a little easier. This is Jesus and Satan having a conversation with each other. And Satan is tempting Jesus, and the author leads you through what's going on, and this is Satan telling Jesus to worship him. And so if you were to read that and say, ah, this is like this is God saying he's gonna give us all these good things if we worship him. Well, that's not what it's saying at all. That's completely devoid of the context that the author wrote it in. And so what's the who's the author, who's the speaker, and what is he trying to say? And so we have to just constantly be thinking about these things. So uh the book of Genesis is explaining the uh the first marriage, and Moses gives a little bit of commentary on that first marriage, and so that kind of helps us understand. Okay, this is kind of where marriage was before the fall. Right. Now there's a bunch of other stuff after the fall. Okay, what's the apostle Paul doing in Ephesians chapter five? The apostle Paul is giving instructions to Christians about what a Christian marriage should look like based on the definition of marriage that was given back in Genesis chapter two. And so we just need to understand and we need to work with the text of Scripture and learn how to understand the text of Scripture.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Can you read that passage again? But when it's has a pronoun, give the proper who's who that pronoun is saying to so that the so that we can all hear it and go, wow, that actually makes more sense.

SPEAKER_03

And can you also give the address of that?

SPEAKER_00

One way,

How To Read Scripture In Context

SPEAKER_00

yeah. We're in the Matthew chapter four, verse nine.

SPEAKER_03

Of the ESV.

SPEAKER_00

Well, not now that I'm fixing the pronouns, but yeah. And he, Satan, said to him, Jesus, all these, and he's talking about the kingdoms of the world that's in the verse before that. All the kingdoms of the world, I, Satan, will give to you Jesus, if you, Jesus, will fall down and worship me, Satan.

SPEAKER_03

I just love that because it's like Jesus gonna have all the kingdoms anyway, and then he has to suffer.

SPEAKER_00

I know it's coming. Satan is trying to give him something without the suffering and without doing it God's way.

SPEAKER_03

Which when we're talking about marriage books, that is that is a good lesson there too. Like it Satan wants us to go a different way without doing the hard work and getting to well, maybe not Satan, but never mind.

SPEAKER_00

Well, no, yeah, like and our flesh and the world and everything else.

SPEAKER_03

I'm like, I'm trying to verbally process this here. Like we're really talking about.

SPEAKER_00

You're getting to a really point, though, because sometimes we say, ah, I need to know about marriage. Let me go to the scriptures and let me read all the marriage passages.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_00

One of my favorite marriage passages is Philippians chapter 2, verses 1 through like 13. And it's talking about being humble and counting others more significant than myself. That's a beautiful practical thing that we need to do in marriage, is to humble ourselves and to count my spouse more significant than myself and look to her own interests, not just my own interests. And so that's why we just need this really like deep base of scripture knowledge when we before we even start talking about other books, yeah, scripture knowledge. Hopefully, we've been clear on that in the podcast, like Bible first, Bible first, Bible first, and then we add to it some other helpful resources.

SPEAKER_03

And one thing I want to say to that is being cautious of just reading people's ideas of what scripture says. That's why we need to have that deep knowledge of what the word of God actually says in its contextual relevance, like in its meaning, so that we actually have a grounding and a footing to stand on when we're coming to these things because we can get real jacked up real quick.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've I've had people bring books to me and be like, oh, look at this book. It's talking about this, and it's so great. It has so much scripture in it. And and as soon as I open up, I start going through it. I'm like, wait a minute, that passage is out of context. That passage is out of context. He's using this passage for what he wants to say, but it has nothing to do with what the actual Bible is talking about. And so, yeah, we really have to be careful when one, we're reading scripture in context. We need to make sure we know the author, we know the audience, we know we have existing frameworks when we go to the text, and the text is what needs to adjust our frameworks. So if it says something that is against what we think, we need to be ready to change what we think. Yeah. And then as we're reading it in context, we need to we need to dive into it and go, okay, what of this is just describing what happened, and what of this is actually telling us we need to do something or or change something or fix something.

SPEAKER_00

And just to clarify a doctrine that we are professing, a rightly interpreted Bible is authoritative in the life of a Christian. That's right. We're not in authority over the Bible.

SPEAKER_03

Amen.

SPEAKER_00

We are submitting, like even trying to come up with okay, what is the author trying to share here? We believe God is the ultimate capital A author, and our job is to submit to a right interpretation of scripture, but it is authoritative in the life of the believer.

SPEAKER_03

And I think one thing that we're trying to advocate very clearly is biblical literacy for men and women. You need to be biblically literate, you need to understand and read the word of God and know what it says. Because in light of marriage, sometimes we think those single pulled-out passages are the only passages that speak to marriage when actually the entire Bible is teaching us about the marriage between Christ and the church. And that if we had a robust doctrinal like stance on that, our marriages would be shaped in a very radical way that would rock the world because we would be loving like Jesus and like Christ loved the church because it is a picture of Christ in the church. So I think just I love what you said because you used a verse or a passage from Philippians that isn't even like thus says the Lord in marriage, you know. So I think that's great.

SPEAKER_00

But there are some there are some passages that say husbands, comma, instructions, yeah, wives, comma, instructions. And I think sometimes we want to like weasel our way out of those instructions way too quickly with you know, historical context and some of these other things. And we need to consider the context, we need to consider what is the author trying to say, but historical context does not give us away an exit ramp from everything in scripture. And and some writers today are basically trying to get out of all kinds of things that scripture is really clear about.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And with this whole like historical, well, that's historical, and so that doesn't count here. Like, well, yes, it does.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we've got Genesis giving us the foundation and the principles, and then thousands of years later, we have epistles or letters that are being written that are very straightforward in nature. When you're talking about author and audience, epistles are are really, really easy to interpret because it is very clear like, hey, this is the word of God telling you to do something or not to do something. It is from one person to another person or in a group of people to proclaim those things. And it is pretty simple to take those things and realize what is prescriptive and what is descriptive.

SPEAKER_00

So it's interesting. So Genesis chapter two, the context that is written in is most likely from Moses to the Israelites right before they're about to enter the promised land. Okay. That the the differences between that context and first century Rome, in which the Apostle Paul is writing in Ephesians to like the Roman Empire in this town called Ephesus, the context is so different. And they literally word for word say the same things about marriage. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'll I'll so we're we're almost 20 minutes into this and we're talking scripture, scripture, scripture. But I have a question.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, you have to I have a question for you that's gonna segue us out. Because you're right. He's asked this person is asking about marriage books, right? So my question is what are the main things we should be looking for when we are reading books? And this is marriage books, this is any kind of doctrinal or theological book. I know I have some things I look for. What are some things y'all are looking for when you pick up a book that's gonna exposite or teach us what God's Word is trying to communicate to us?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I'll start. And that and that's why I was saying

Context Clues For Marriage Passages

SPEAKER_01

we spent majority of this time talking about, well, start in the Bible, dive into scripture in context, appropriately interpreting, and have a good idea of what it says from there. Because all these books you go into now, secondhand, are just describing from a lot of the same texts that you have in your hand in your in in the scriptures.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

So know that well so that when you dive into these other books, these marriage books, there's I mean, the the industry that is out there of marriage books is unending. It is it is ridiculous how many books there are out there. We recommend a lot of books, this podcast, and we do that with warning. Like these are fallible humans that are just trying to proclaim a message through the written word. And quite honestly, none of them are perfect because none of them are scripture themselves. And so we have to do that with great warning and and caveat each one of those with hey, look, eat the meat, spit out the bones, but you do that by knowing your scriptures first. So when you read a book, you need to go at it with the same, the same mindset that you did with the scriptures as far as like who is this author, why is he writing it, what's his main idea, and then who's the audience? And then when you read it, go through it and be okay. So some of this is aligning with scripture, some of it is just his opinion, some of it is really off. You need to spit that out, but then take the truth for what the truth says. And that's a very generalized way of saying all that. I'm sure there's a lot more to add.

SPEAKER_03

Well, something you just said about knowing the audience the author is writing to is very important, especially with marriage books. If he's writing to an audience that, you know, both people are possibly going to be reading this book together, they are trying to seek a healthy marriage. He might not or she may not cover the outliers like abusive situations or sexual intimacy, certain things like that. He they might not be coming from that perspective because that might not be their main audience. And if you don't understand that, you could get a really distorted view of the book because it can be misapplied. Let's say you're in an abusive relationship and you're reading this book, it could be misapplied because you're not taking into account that he's not telling you or she's not telling you that this is what you do and you just stay abused. Because that's that's not truth. We do not believe that here. So that that might have been a little convoluted in my mind. I could see what I was trying to say, but I think understanding who the audience is is an important quality of a book. Maybe even look at the copyright date. When is this written?

SPEAKER_00

So we're we're using very similar principles that we learned and how to interact with scripture, like who's the author, who's

Filters For Choosing Marriage Books

SPEAKER_00

the audience. So every book I've ever picked up, audiobooks are a little tougher to. Find this, but on a written book, there's usually a blurb about the author. Always. There's a blurb about the author. Okay, who is this? Are they a pastor? Are they a seminary professor? Are they a stay-at-home mom? Are they, you know, just a guy that, you know, decided to write?

SPEAKER_03

Like you just a seminary professor, a women's ministry leader?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What where are they coming from? And then I do look at the copyright dates, right? Because sometimes we're trying to get authors to answer questions they're not trying to answer or that they don't even know to answer. Like if you were to ask a marriage book in 1984, like, how is the smartphone ruining marriages? Right. That would make no sense at all because the smartphone wasn't invented. That's an extreme version.

SPEAKER_03

But like that's a good, a good analogy. Yeah. That's it.

SPEAKER_00

So like the copyright date might tell you some things. Also, what are they trying to do? A lot of marriage books that we recommend in pre-marriage counseling are general. Hey, here's a biblical understanding of marriage. Just general. Like you say, they're not trying to speak to these nuanced things. Right. There's other books that we would give to a married couple when we see that there's a presenting problem in the marriage. Man, communication is really eating your lunch. Y'all don't know how to speak to each other. And there was a really cool chapter about communication in the book we gave you in pre-marriage counseling. But now maybe we want to recommend this book that's very specific about uh communication, or if sexual intimacy is a problem, or something else is a problem, we can recommend different books for that situation.

SPEAKER_01

Or even a chapter of a book.

SPEAKER_02

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Like so oftentimes we'll recommend a book, but really we're saying, hey, you really want to actually just read this chapter. Like the rest of the book isn't specific to this, but this chapter is helpful.

SPEAKER_03

So what you're saying is author intent.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um yeah, what are they trying to do with the book?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because no, if it's a real listen, I I would encourage to give it to us, Brian.

SPEAKER_02

What are you gonna say?

SPEAKER_00

Publishers are trying like publishers are trying to stay in business. A lot of Christian publishers are actually nonprofits, and so they're but they want to keep producing good content, right? And you don't produce good content by not selling books, right? So they're trying to sell good books, that's what they're trying to do. And different publishers have different ideas about what a good book is, but you can't get through the publishing process without having a defined audience and purpose for your book, right? If it's a decent publisher, so I would lean towards published books, not self-published books, because there's something in that editing process and publishing process that almost always produces a better product. And so I would just make a plea for that.

SPEAKER_01

I would also say when you're reading a book, understand that they're not gonna tell you what they're not trying to say. Like they only have so many words for so many pages when they're going through this publishing process. So they're not gonna, they're not gonna take time going down rabbit trails of saying, now understand what I'm not saying by all of these things.

SPEAKER_00

Because that's not a good book.

SPEAKER_01

Right. It's a horrible book. Like they're gonna explain what they're trying to say on the topic in the affirmative of what they're acting they're talking to.

SPEAKER_00

So oops, on the converse, people who write book reviews are sometimes trying to nitpick. Yeah. And so if you read a book review on like a blog article or something like that, some people have found themselves a niche going against like big name authors or big name books, and they have found a niche for themselves being a hater and just you know, lobbing grenades at people who write books for a living.

SPEAKER_03

Or pulling sentences out of context or not understanding. And you and I probably understand that with writing things, like things that I have written that have been criticized by people, and I'm like, I didn't say that. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. Not that I've written a lot, but I have

Authors, Audiences, And Review Traps

SPEAKER_03

had that happen, you know.

SPEAKER_01

But because you didn't say that you didn't mean this, they're gonna go after that thing that you didn't say that you didn't mean that you didn't or something like that.

SPEAKER_03

I don't believe that at all. I don't know where you got that, you know. I think so go ahead.

SPEAKER_00

I think one other kind of back to the original question like, how would you recommend finding good books for a young couple? Again, we're saying start with scripture or and then add to that other helpful books, pay attention to how that book is using scripture. But we're kind of assuming people are kind of in the context of other healthy believers and other healthy marriages. Like, find that couple who's a little bit older than you, has been married a little bit longer than you, and ask them, like, hey, what are some of your favorite marriage books? What are some of the ones that you would recommend for us? Hey, you know us, you've seen our marriage a little bit. What books should we be reading? Those types of things.

SPEAKER_01

And then even follow up with a question of, hey, fill in the blank to where where I might actually fall into a trap. Like, hey, you've read this book before, you're recommending it to me. What are some things that it's not saying that I don't need to be paying attention to? Or what are some things that are in the book that maybe might lead me down a path because I have certain frameworks when I come to this book? So if I have a framework and I'm reading this book that was recommended by my grandma, and grandma had a way different context when she read it and was very helpful for her. In your context today, maybe it's not helpful, and it might cause you to think it's saying things that it wasn't meant to be said, it wasn't meant to be proclaimed.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So the reason we're not bringing up the book, like some of the books that were mentioned in the email was like we all one of the books were like, Man, I read it, but it's been years since I read it. And so, and then other books, like, I haven't read that book. And so we don't want to speak on specific books if we haven't read it or if we haven't read it or reread it recently.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Because, like you say, our theology grows, our understanding grows, culture shifts. Like, man, that book was great in its time, but it has now, you know, been used in some weird ways or or whatever the case is.

SPEAKER_01

Well, whether it was even used or weird ways or not, like if you just if if it's the principle that they're after is good, yeah. You can still rec like I recommend books all the time and say, hey, look, in principle, these portions of this book are great. There's some aspects that are a little weird in it, but these this principle is really well dived into here.

SPEAKER_03

Right, because culture shifts, but the word of God does not change. So just because the culture shifted, the truth of God's word stands. And so that's why we want to encourage a healthy, robust understanding of the word of God and what he has to say about marriage, and then make our frameworks adjust and align to what the word of God says. Because honestly, marriage is under attack. The family is under attack, the home is under attack, and God has a lot to say about it. Joshua, I don't know if you heard this somewhere, but he always reminds myself and our kids like healthy homes make up healthy churches and communities. Like there's a reason they're under attack. So this robust idea of understanding scripture, and then when you're coming to books, understanding who it's for, what it's meant to do, and actually engage with it. I've read books that I don't know if I'm necessarily gonna agree with the author just because somebody nitpicked it and I want to know, like, but what does it actually say? I like logic and debate have taught me, hey, I don't want to cherry pick, especially in our culture today. You can get on Instagram, TikTok, and just watch a reel of 20 seconds of some be somebody being quoted and it's clipped and edited. But what did they actually say in that 30-minute speech? I think that's important when we're looking at books as well. Do you guys have anything else? Because we're close to wrapping up time here.

SPEAKER_00

No.

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, be in context with other people, be with other Christians, be with other human beings. And I would say on the topic of marriage, non-Christians aren't gonna be all that helpful.

SPEAKER_02

That's good.

SPEAKER_00

There's other topics that I find non-Christians relatively helpful. I have to have a lens uh with how I read it. So I love productivity podcasts and books. I just love it. That's just something I I love. And I have found Christians are very helpful, and I found non-Christians can also be helpful, just how to be a more productive human being. On the topic of marriage, I can't like non-Christian book on marriage just doesn't make a lot of sense to me because God defined marriage and God just God really has the authority on this. And so a good, helpful marriage book Christian needs to be Christian and it needs

Community Help And When To Counsel

SPEAKER_00

to have a right definition of marriage and it needs to interact with scripture well.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I love that. I love that a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Even those books, when you go to them, don't go to them with what expecting them to say something that they're they weren't meant, like they wasn't designed to to say. Right.

SPEAKER_03

I love the idea of being in community and asking, you know, believers around you. Honestly, that was super helpful for Joshua and I in our early marriage years. We looked to people that we were like, man, they have a thriving, healthy marriage. They love each other. What are they doing so that we can emulate that? Like, how are they engaging with the word of God? What would they recommend reading? I I just love that advice, Brian, because you you are actually seeing the fruit in front of you of something that that could benefit you from somebody that you actually know and see. So, yeah. Do you have something else?

SPEAKER_00

I think the other thing, like if you so the normal stuff we recommend on this podcast all the time is read your Bible, pray, journal, talk to each other, join a church, talk to other Christians, right? Like that's all the normal stuff. If if you've been doing those things and that's not getting you out of the funk that you're in, you need to be more intentional about bringing other people into that. So that may be some pastoral counseling, that may be some more intention, more intentional marriage counseling, that may be some individual counseling for how marriage is bringing up stuff from your past or your life or your experiences. And so just like if the normal stuff isn't working, that's when we need to bring more people into the into the situation.

SPEAKER_03

That's really good. Well, thank you to the listener who sent in that question. We hope this was a helpful discussion. If you have questions for us or topics you want us to discuss and chat about over our little table here that we sit at, you can't see us, so you don't know when it looks like send them to hello at military wellness collective.com. That's hello at military wellness collective.com, and we'll engage with those questions and share our thoughts and what we've learned through the years on those. We really appreciate you guys spending your time with us. We'll see you again next week.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks, guys.