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Tonight, right here on the Sword of the Spirit podcast, it's marriage advice with Brother Theo Matthews from Steadfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, the satellite. You're not going to want to miss this. The show starts right after this intro package. Stay tuned, folks. Welcome everyone to episode 18 of the Sword of the Spirit podcast. This is Benjamin Naive, the name of Ben the Baptist, here with you all for another episode of the show on this November 25th, 2019, 9 p.m. Eastern Time. That's when this program airs each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash Ben the Baptist. And you can also find the archived edition of the show, the podcast, over on Apple Podcasts. Just use the keyword Ben the Baptist if you'd like to subscribe. And of course, the program is also available on the Stitcher Radio app. I have a very special guest with me. It's the first time he's appeared on this particular program. Obviously, we've done live streams in the past together on various topics, but when I thought about doing a show about marriage, there was one name that immediately came to mind for a special guest, and it's Theo Matthews. He's been married for a long time. We'll get the exact number of years here momentarily. But I also think that he's got a lot of wisdom on this topic. He's preached about it numerous times before, and so I wanted to bring him on, give him this platform to help some of you out there. If you find yourself in a struggling marriage or even in a great marriage that you want to make even better, we hope that tonight this will be a blessing for you. I want to also invite people in the chat room, if you have any questions about marriage, that's the topic tonight, don't be asking about the Nephilim or some stupid garbage like that. If you have questions on marriage, something relevant to the show, then please share them in the chat room and I'll make sure to ask the question to Theo tonight as we'll be talking about marriage advice. Of course, from the perspective of the Word of God, because all good marriages are built on the Bible. Why is it that divorce rates are skyrocketing today? Well, that's because society has drifted further and further away from the Word of God, and what does that result in? Gender roles that have been flip-flopped and as human beings depart from the natural order. Of course, you're going to get failed marriages, you're going to get depression, you're going to get a social system that is collapsing around us, but the Bible is the rock, Jesus Christ is that rock, and if you build your marriage on that foundation, well then you'll be just fine and you will prosper and have a happy marriage in an era where you can argue that is a rarity today, again, with those divorce rates skyrocketing. Even if you're not married, I do think this show could be profitable for you because you can learn some things that you could take into your new marriage. So without any further ado, let me introduce the guest for tonight's program. Ladies and gentlemen, give them a round of applause, folks. From Steadfast Baptist JAX, a friend of mine, and the boots on the ground here at this satellite church in Jacksonville, Florida, Brother Theo Matthews joins me right now. Brother Theo, thank you for coming on tonight. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's good to be here, good to be on with you, and I appreciate you inviting me. I want to be helpful. Like I said, it's your first time on the show, but I really look forward to it. It's really overdue in a sense. Now let's start things off by talking about your credentials, give you some credibility here. How long have you been married, Theo? Fifteen years. Fifteen years, so that's about almost, yeah, that's a long time. Almost as long as, I'm 26, so you do the math there, about halfway through my life. But anyway, Theo, it's really been, it's been a blessing to have you here in Jacksonville and you've been working very hard, but my first question for you is this. The current state of marriage in America today, in my opinion, maybe you're more optimistic than I am, but I see divorce rates skyrocketing. I see no-fault divorce. I see couples giving up very easily on their marriage. Is it possible that that word marriage means less than it ever has? To some, I mean, definitely to the world. People in the world, they just take advantage of marriage and they see it as just a legal partnership or some legal thing, when actually it's more of a spiritual, more of an emotional connection between a man and a woman, and for whatever reason, it's gotten worse and worse where people are getting divorced and getting remarried and then getting divorced again and getting remarried again. And it's almost losing its meaning as far as I could see today. And it's encouraged. It's unfortunate that Hollywood and just politics in general encourage throwing away your marriage because you don't like it, or they have some stupid phrase like you can fall in love and you can fall out of love, but that's just the dumbest thing I ever heard of. But that's what you see on TV, that's what you see in the movies, and people are just eating it up and they participate in that fruitionist, unfortunately. Yeah. Well we have someone here in the chat room. Grammy 7 says, I was married for 46 years, blessings, husband is now IFB and says my husband is now with the Lord. We have this other question, so that's good, it's good to see people married for decades and decades and decades in a successful marriage. We have this one here, Philly Chimp, he asks the question, what's the minimum length of time you should date a woman before marrying her? What do you think about that one? Minimum. That really depends. Of course, it depends on you because how mature do you think you are? When I say love, when you love this woman or you love this man, you're entering into a relationship where it shouldn't ever break apart, and so I can't give you an exact number on that. Some people say a year, two years, three years, whatever, but it could be less than a year based upon your maturity, if you really love the person, if the other person really loves you. I think of love as a decision, and if you can make that decision maturely before the Lord and say, yeah, this is going to be my spouse, I would say start making preparations as soon as... I don't want to put a number on it, but as soon as you had that certainty, you've made that decision, you're going to be with that person for the rest of your life, there's not a real number on that. If you put a number on it, that's also saying you're limiting yourself and limiting God because if there's a godly woman that wants to be married and you've been talking to her and she's ready to go and she likes you, she loves you, I would say just go ahead and go through with it and get married and grow from your marriage, have children, love the Lord, serve the Lord, I would just say do that, and if that time period is a month, go for it. People make excuses about compatibility or I don't like this thing. If you're a man and she's a woman and she's godly and you're godly, I would say that's compatible enough. You definitely want to get to know them. You don't want to just marry anybody, but however long that takes you to figure that out, that would be the time limit. There's not a real number in my book to date, so hopefully that answers your question. When it comes to a newlywed couple, I remember when I first got married, the first bit of advice I got was don't even think about using the D-word, which is of course divorce. The mentality you have to go into it is, this is it. There's no way out now, you're in it until one of you dies. Do you share that same view in the sense that these married couples today, it seems like they go into it with this mentality of, well, there's always a way I can get out of this at some point, but do you really have to just get that out of your mind completely, not even use that word? That it's got to be a banned word, because sometimes couples, they'll get into a fight, and it seems like you lost your video there, but they'll get into a fight and things like that, and perhaps one will threaten the other or divorce or something, but how poisonous is that to go into a new marriage with that in the back of your mind using that word divorce? That's horrible. I mean, that's setting yourself up for failure. Every time you go into anything and you're thinking, oh man, I'm going to lose or I'm not going to make it, you already set yourself up to not do well, to not have any success, and so before we got married, we threw out the D word as you call it. We threw that out. That wasn't an option at all. There's no place for it. I hate divorce. God does too, and there's just no place for it. Anytime you want to go into something and it goes against your decision, because marriage is a decision that you have to make, then you're already setting yourself up to fail, to lose, and that's going to damage. You use the word poison. It's poison. It will be poison in there. I'll tell you this. By not including the D word, by not even focusing on that, I think that we have a lot of success in our marriage. We have a lot of happy times in our marriage, even when things can get kind of tough and kind of tight emotionally. Since I have no fear of losing or fear of divorce or fear of things falling to pieces, I know that I can work towards a better marriage. For example, if I'm failing in a certain area and I know I need to get better, then I'm going to get better. If someone is failing in the marriage and they have that D word back there, they know, oh, I could just divorce. Well, they'll just quit because they know that they could just quit and that'll alleviate the pain, that'll get rid of the feelings that they have about their inadequacy. I know that I'm not perfect, but I also know I'm going to try to do my best to support my wife and support my family and just to keep our marriage strong, keep us going. You want to eliminate divorce from your vocabulary unless you're cursing it or you're telling people not to do it, there's no place for it. You said that God hates divorce. That's exactly what the Bible says. Malachi chapter 2 and verse 16, for the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away. So that's backed up by scripture. The Bible also says in Luke chapter 16 verse 18, whosoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another comitteth adultery and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband comitteth adultery. We see just how seriously the Lord Jesus Christ takes this in that it is a situation here in Luke chapter number 16 where if you divorce your wife and marry another one, you are committing adultery, which is of course a wicked sin. This word shouldn't even enter your vocabulary. I totally agree with that bit of advice there. But let's talk about married couples now because in today's world there's so much going on. The man's got a full-time job. The woman's guiding the house as it should be at least. That's the situation you would want in a marriage. But the woman is guiding the house, cooking, cleaning if she has children. She's taking care of the children, raising the children, etc. And so there might be a time in which the husband and the wife just aren't spending very much time together. How important is it in your estimation to make time for your marriage? Because even me, for example, it's only been a couple of years, but I find myself having to remind myself, hey, it's been a while since I just put away all the distractions and focused on my wife and spent some time with my wife having a conversation, being her friend, talking about her day, talking about the Bible, talking about whatever subject is out there that we're interested in and just spending time with her. How important is it to carve out that time with your wife and how would you recommend that someone do that? What are some activities that you could do together that you think couples should do? Yeah, I think it's a good goal to connect with your wife daily. I have five children and sometimes I don't really get a deep connection with her every single day. But I do talk to her every day and I think that's key because you don't want to miss out on anything that she might be thinking about or something that you need to be thinking about. A lot of times, my wife is thinking of things that I'm just not even thinking about. And if I don't talk to her in a day, then I'm actually going to miss out on something I should be doing. She helps me a lot around the house and she helps me a lot remembering things. And so I think it's very important to connect daily. Now, if daily is not possible, I would say definitely set a time every couple of days where you can just sit down and talk 30 minutes, an hour maybe, and connect, review what you did at work, ask her about her day. If you have children, ask her what's going on with the children, are there any difficulties are there any successes, what are the topics that they're learning in their schooling. I would say definitely set aside a time, a couple of times a week at least, where it's just you and her for 30 minutes, an hour so that you can connect and gather up all the things that you need to know about your life. And some activities that you can do, you can't do it every day, you can try but it's hard and would be like going for a walk or riding your bike together. You can go to a park and just sit down and be able to talk and that's something you could also do with children because the children enjoy walks, children enjoy riding bikes, going to the park, running around. Those are some good activities that you could do, plus walking and biking is healthy for you so you kind of kill two birds with one stone, you're able to get fit and healthy and also connect with your wife, connect with your spouse. In that time I would say find out what she likes, tell her what you like, even just about being outside. The good thing about being outside is if you're walking around, the scenery is constantly changing. If you're in a neighborhood, you're walking down, you're seeing different kinds of houses, you can talk about the houses, what you don't like about a certain house, what you do like about a certain house, you can talk about the trees and the cars that pass by. There's a lot of things to talk about and I think the talking is key, that communication. As far as activities, just communicating in general. You don't have to leave the house to do that. Be able to sit down and just talk, communicate, ask questions, find out things. I'm still learning things about my wife and I told her recently a couple times how I just enjoy learning things about her, learning new things, I enjoy it. It's just fun. So those are some activities you could do with your wife, yeah. This is a family show, we're not going to get too graphic, but the Bible does tell us in 1 Corinthians 7 verse 5, defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again, that Satan tempts you not for your incontinency. By virtue of the fact that we're both men, we're probably going to give more of a perspective of the husband when we're talking about marriage here, but the Bible does say defraud ye not one the other there, except it be with consent for a time. And there's no doubt that physical relationship that is reserved only for marriage is very important. I'm sure you would agree with that. And again, as we live in a culture that is just getting more degenerate and depraved, you see images everywhere, you see billboards, you see, you know, not necessarily movies because if you're trying to stay away from movies obviously you're not going to see them, but just when you're out and about in the world, at the mall, things like that, ads, whatever the case may be, and of course the internet. A lot of men fall into the wicked sin of looking at disgusting things on the internet, videos, whatever the case may be, and so that can impact the marriage big time. What's your advice to men with the temptations everywhere in this world, the whores all over the place, all over the media, all over the ads and billboards and things like that, what's your advice to men who perhaps are struggling with that in the context of their marriage? What can they do to make sure that they maintain their desire to their wife, as it should be, as the way God wants it to be, by the way, rather than sharing that with everything else? Yeah, I would say in 1 Corinthians 7, 9 it says, but if they cannot contain, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn, and I like that verse there because it is like a burning that a man will have, and also in that verse it says marry, and so a part of being married is so that you are not burning, and if you are burning, well, you're married, so that burning that you have, men, it should be towards your wife, and the advice that I would give is spend as much time as possible that you can with your wife so that your physical relationship with her will be a much better relationship, and even more often because you know your wife, you know about your wife, and as far as defrauding one another, you wouldn't want to because you're with her constantly, you're talking to her constantly, you're knowing her. I mean the Bible uses the phrase to know as a euphemism, but also just knowing her, knowing what she likes, knowing what she doesn't like, just knowing about your wife helps, and you get that from talking to her, walking with her, communicating with her daily or every few days getting with her, so I would say focus on your wife and the burning that you have, you need to direct that burning towards your wife because she's yours until you die, and you belong to her until you die, and so that's what I see. She's your wife. And don't let the world corrupt that because it's trying to, and it's trying to infiltrate marriages in that way with these Hollywood whores and the images everywhere and things like that. Don't allow the wickedness of this world to corrupt the purity of a biblical marriage. I think that's so important because you'll see it go down the drain if you do allow that to happen, for sure. So important, definitely that's some great advice there from you there, Brother Theo. Take some discipline, but at the end of the day, you have to recognize that woman you married is who God put in your life for a reason. Don't take her for granted in that area. The Bible tells us in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. It says in Colossians 3 18, wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Same thing. We see this common theme when it comes to marriage that regarding the wife, it is her job to submit to the husband, to obey her husband. What does that look like in your opinion, Brother Theo? Because there's some confusion on this. People Christians, they'll make excuses for scriptures like this, and they'll say, yeah, it says submit, but you know what? We still have the exact same role, and I think that's a sexist mentality to say that I need to submit to my husband. And so people just don't understand what the Bible's actually teaching here. You have others who would criticize the Word of God and say, oh, look, God hates women. He's telling wives to submit to their own husbands. But what does submission mean? What is biblical submission, and how would you describe it for men out there who are already married or who want to be married in the future so they know exactly what it means? Yeah, I would say submission number one is just obedience to their own husband. I mean, you used one of my favorite scriptures there, Ephesians 5, 22, but 23, verse 23 says for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. So it doesn't say the husband is the head of the wife, even as a CEO is head of some company. It says as Christ is head of the church. And so I think that's for both the husband and the wife, because the husband needs to see, okay, he's the head, but he should be the head like Christ is head of the church, giving himself up for the church, loving the church, sacrificing himself for the church. That's what the husband ought to do. But then us as believers, we need to submit to Christ, we need to take captive every thought that we have, we need to keep our bodies under control, we need to practice obedience to Jesus Christ and everything that he taught us. And so that scripture there is for both the husband and the wife, the wife, yes, she needs to submit, she needs to obey, but then the husband needs to lead, he needs to be like Christ, the mind of Christ, his mind needs to be transformed, he can't be being foolish with his thoughts or just flippant with his thoughts, and any time that he messes up, he needs to own up to him messing up because he's not perfect, no man out there is perfect. And so, yeah, as far as submission, I think there's two parts to that. That's the wife obeying her husband, and then that's also the husband leading the wife. Because I'll tell you what, a woman, a wife is going to have a hard time submitting. And I've heard this before, if her husband's a jerk or if he's a meanie or he's very selfish, basically not Christ-like, she's going to have a difficult time submitting to that man, and that happens. And there's women that complain about their husband just being deficient in leadership and not being a godly man. And some women, they go to church by themselves because their husband doesn't want to go. And I think also about Abigail in the Bible, she was married to Nabal, the churlish, foolish, stubborn guy who, I think he was a horrible husband, but she stayed with him. She still submitted, she still stayed with him, but eventually she was rescued out of that situation. And I would just say that a wife needs to submit by obeying her husband, and husbands, they need to lead their wives, love their wives as Christ loved the church. Now what if you've got a guy though who gets saved, he gets in church, he's on fire for God, he gets his wife saved, and he's trying to lead her spiritually and help her to understand the Bible better, but she is struggling in that area of submission, she still talks back, she's still not necessarily obeying her husband in the way that you would expect from a godly woman, and messes up routinely in that area and isn't doing a very good job in that area. How does a man deal with a situation like that? Should he, A, start yelling at her every day? Should he, B, sit down with a King James Bible in hand and maybe try and teach her? What's the next course of action for a guy who's in that type of situation? Is it just, oh, well, you know what, you're screwed, you just married the wrong person? Or is there a way out, and is there something a guy can do to fix that? Yeah, so long suffering will be the first part of that, and I would say, yeah, get your Bible and teach your wife that you're trying to be gentle, and she needs to submit, she needs to obey the Bible, she needs to obey God first, and then she needs to obey you. I would be very gentle with her if that's the situation. When I mean gentle, the Bible says to dwell with them according to knowledge, and also to treat them, I'm paraphrasing, treat them as a weaker vessel. When I think of a weaker vessel, I think of a fragile vase. You want to be very delicate and careful with it, so be long suffering and gentle with her, explain to her what the Bible says, and a part of being able to explain that, you need to know it yourself. You need to know what God says the roles are for the man and the woman in the marriage. You said something that made me think, you said routinely, so if she's routinely struggling, I would say the only way to deal with a routine of struggling is just to routinely talk to her, be gentle with her, and that right there would be an everyday thing. If you're at work, that means you're calling her, whether it's lunchtime or call her throughout the day at work or from work. I would say if it's routinely, you need to routinely work at it and take care of your wife. That's your job as a husband. She belongs to you. You need to take care of her. She's precious to you. If you have some piece of equipment that's broken, a hammer or some tool or something, you're going to want to try to replace that tool. You're going to want to try to fix that car that's broken. You're going to want to try to fix whatever it is that belongs to you that's broken. In the same way, if your wife is routinely struggling in an area, you need to fix that situation as quickly as possible and as delicately as possible. She's not a tool. She's not some piece of equipment. She's a person, and you need to take care of her in that manner. Let me be clear. There's not a just man upon the earth that doeth good and sinneth not. If you audience out there are looking for a woman who's never going to make a mistake, who's never going to struggle in any area, including submission ever, then you're going to just never be satisfied. Or if you're single, you'll never get married because it doesn't work that way. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Nobody's perfect. It always works. It's work to do, but it's a blessing though. A part of that blessing is that you become a better man. She becomes a better woman. You have children. You are able to raise the children together, and the children become better people. There's a blessing, but there is work. You have to put some effort into it. Let's talk about the husband's focus on the husband's real quickly here. Of course, we're both men, and the majority of the audience is men. What makes a weak leader in your opinion when it comes to a husband? Of course, the Bible does tell us that the husband is the head of the wife, and he's expected to lead the family and be the head of the household. Today, when I use that word weak, by the way, I'm not just talking about an effeminate. I'm just talking about a weak leader, someone who just isn't leading right or is just messing up in that area and not leading his wife in the right direction. What are some attributes you would look at? Obviously, it's a broad topic. I understand that. We could really go all night just on this one thing, so you don't have to hit every single point if you can't or there's no time or anything like that. What would make a weak leader, in your opinion, in the context of a marriage? Of course, we're specifically talking about husbands here. The number one thing I would say is selfishness. I think a woman can smell selfishness a mile away. If you're selfish as the husband, as the leader in your family, I think that will make you weak. The reason is because you can't see past your own wants or your own desires. You can't see past what revolves around you. When you have a wife involved or even children involved, they're going to be beyond your personal desires and wants. They're going to be beyond that. You have to be able to see past what you want to get out of life. An example might be, say you always wanted that boat. You always wanted to buy that boat. You saved up money for it, and that's your focus in life. You want to get that boat. Well, when you're married, the boat is going to have to take second or third or even fourth place or even just the last place, the bottom of the list, after your wife. Because if you just focus on the boat, then you're going to be missing what your wife wants. The Bible even says a married man's desire is going to be for his wife. When you have a successful marriage, you need to desire your wife. You need to be focused on your wife. If you're focused on your own needs, your own wants, you're going to be a poor leader. You're not going to be able to lead. Because even your wife, she's going to see that it's all about you, and she's not going to want to bring concerns to you. She might even rebel. I mentioned that routine struggling. You might cause her to routinely struggle with submission because you're a poor leader. You only care about yourself, or at least that's what she thinks. She's only thinking that you care about yourself, and you're not going to get anywhere. So I would say primarily selfishness would make you a weak leader, a weak husband. Proverbs 16 32, it says, he that is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh the city. And that concept of ruling your spirit, I think for me, as someone who's not very experienced in this area, having been married just a couple of years, but still, it's something I've had to learn and get better at, ruling your spirit, not being quick to anger, not being quick to just lose it. And as a leader, as a man especially, you can't be the one who's constantly emotional. You have to be the one that controls your emotions. You have to be that alpha who's stoic and able to make decisions, not out of emotions, but based on logic. And I think that when it comes to marriage, Brother Theo, maybe you could speak to this. How important is that attribute of having the ability to control yourself, having the ability not to just scream and yell at the drop of a hat the minute that your wife messes up, controlling, you know, ruling that spirit, being slow to anger, which, by the way, God is, the Bible says, slow to wrath, slow to anger, long suffering and patient. And that patience and that long suffering-ness, if that's even a word, and the ability to control your spirit and to control that anger, it takes practice. It takes discipline. And when you're walking in the flesh, you don't have that. When you're walking in the flesh, you snap really easily. And then all of a sudden one thing leads to another. And you find yourself in a real nasty argument with the person you love so dearly. And you never want to be in that predicament. You never want that to happen. And so I find myself realizing, hey, if I can control my spirit and rule it and not be quick to anger, then there aren't going to be those giant arguments and fights, which can be very damaging and hurtful emotionally and things like that. Talk a little about the importance of ruling your spirit from a man's perspective. You know, guys, they got the testosterone, the red blood, and tend to be the ones to snap, perhaps have more of a proclivity to do that more than women. What do you think about that ruling your spirit? Yeah, so that's important. You know, you mentioned being stoic. I think being stoic is just a masculine attribute. I think God has kind of built that in to just being a man. And we really need to master being able to be stoic, know when to share your feelings. For example, I mean, there's a lot of things that upset me, but I'm not going to just unload everything that upsets me onto my wife. I mean, that's, I think, just inappropriate and uncalled for. And so I practice being able to channel it just through my work, channel it through prayer. And when I get to the point to mention it to my wife, if I do, then by that time, it's already been filtered out and I can tell her in a calm way, or I could tell her where she would be able to receive it more softly, more gently, more easily. But as far as just being so enraged where I would just fly off the handle, I mean, that's super rare. And it does take practice. I mean, you have to practice praying, practice just thinking about what you're saying or what is upsetting you. Because any time you just just fly off the handle, just all of a sudden just burst up into flames, especially in front of your wife. And you might actually cause her to just get upset or cry. And then there's a kind of a break in your communication because now she's upset, she's crying. And you're just mad about something that has nothing to do with her or the family or the house or cooking or anything. But she's able to, you know, women are able to connect just, I would say, non-important things to emotions. And whatever it is that you said, it could be translated as, oh, you know, you don't like her cooking. Oh, you don't like the way she's dressed or when it has nothing to do with that. And so as a man, you want to make sure you can contain your emotion because as a man, there's a lot of things that upset me, especially at work. But I'm not going to bring that home to my wife. The home is a happy place. I don't want to mess that up. So it's an ongoing pursuit. And like I said, you know, I've practiced it for a long time. Still, you know, still trying to practice it, trying to just be as humble as possible. I mean, that's the other thing. You want to be humble because if you just get angry about something, pride can build up because, you know, you might think, well, you know, I should be angry or this is my righteous anger. But if you're yelling at your wife, that's not righteous at all. And so you got to you got to be able to find that balance. There's no there's no magic pill. There's no secret to it. It's really the patience with yourself and knowing yourself. You know, if you if you know that people talking about alcohol and staying out late at work upsets you. Well, when they start talking about it, just know, OK, I'm just I'm not even going to think about it right now. Go for a walk or, you know, you do something else where you're not around that and then just kind of filter it out. And then when you tell your wife about it later, just, you know, kind of just mention it to her as I wouldn't say as a joke. But you definitely want to just mention it to her that, yeah, these these guys, they talk about perverseness and stuff. And it's just annoying. But definitely don't don't flout the handle at your wife or even in front of your wife. And don't do that with the children either. Yeah, that can definitely leave some very bad memories for them that can be damaging. And I know that from from experience, you never want to see your parents fighting in that way and being really mean to each other. And things like that. It's the woman. It's the wife who's going to be emotional. It's the wife who's going to have issues controlling her emotions. And so she needs that steady influence in her life, a.k.a. her husband. Is there ever a time, though, Theo, where raising your voice would be warranted? Yes. Yes, there is, because you can get into a place where because so my wife is my best friend and we're friendly, we're friendly to one another. Sometimes, you know, when a situation is serious, it may not I may not communicate it as being as serious as I think it is. And so it still may not be as serious to her. So when I detect that she's not taking it seriously, then I'll raise my voice just to make it more serious than what I think that she thinks it is. I would say that would be a case where raising your voice is warranted, but I'm not yelling at my wife. I'm just raising my voice just so that she knows that this is a serious thing and I'm not playing. It's not a joke. Because, you know, we make jokes with one another and we have fun. But every now and then, when something's really serious, you know, it's just, you know, this is this is serious because even saying saying this is serious could be a joke, too. You know, but that's based on relationships. So I would say in that case, it's warranted to raise your voice when you want to make sure that it's serious and trying to be clear about what what you're thinking or are saying to your wife. And I think we did a good job on this podcast of showing very clearly the distinction between that alpha male leader, the husband, the biblical leader described in the word of God that a husband ought to be and a husband who thinks that he's a leader, when in reality, he's mistreating his wife and basically treating her like a slave girl, which, by the way, is not what the Bible teaches you need to be doing as a husband. And if you find yourself basically verbally or especially physically abusing your own wife, you're disgusting. You're a coward. You're weak. You're a loser. That's what you are. You're an absolute loser. And how dare you take advantage of the weaker vessel in that way makes me sick. The men out there who would do something like that. I want to read you a comment from the chat here real quickly. Heather B. from TN says, I'm married to someone who is not saved. Let me tell you, the struggle is real. It's hard to be married to someone who doesn't value Christ and the importance of church be equally yoked. This is something you've talked about before. It's something I've talked about as well, that you want to be married to someone who's saved. That way you have that playing field. You're on the same playing field. You have that in common. And it allows you as the husband, if your wife is saved, to teach her and lead her spiritually, open up the Bible. I like to do sermons in front of my wife. I'll just sit her down on the couch, open up the Bible and preach an impromptu sermon for 15 minutes or so, just for fun. But also to help her learn the Bible better. I think that's profitable. But we see here a situation in which this woman is not married to someone who is saved. But the good news is salvation is easy. I'll keep that in prayer and hope that her husband gets saved. You never like to see that happen with a married couple in which one person's saved, one person's not. It's never fun to see. Yeah, that is unfortunate. But he still could get saved. That's the good news. One question here real quickly, Theo. Samantha Cunningham says, What advice can you give to a woman seeking a godly man? Where is the right place? What if there are very few Baptist churches around to meet the right people? So this is a girl looking for a godly man, not some worldly loser. The only thing I can think of there, Brother Theo, would be a church that's on fire for God. It's tough because if there are very few Baptist churches around for her to meet the right people, obviously that makes it that much more difficult for her to find that godly man she's looking for. What would you say to a girl like that? Because you wouldn't advocate for her to move out of her parents' house, would you? No, no. So a situation like this, what do you think she should do? That's tough. I mean, I agree that the best place to find a godly man is in a good church. Don't find a man in the mall or some store. If you do want to go to a store, though, at least talk to a guy who's interested in you and he's working. You don't want to just talk to some guy who's just walking around like in the mall or just at the store shopping. Maybe you want to talk to a guy who's actually working, who has a job. But yeah, church, I would say, is the best place to go. There's just so much wickedness in the workplace, at schools and colleges, in the mall. The best place, I would say, is in a good, strong, God-fearing, soul-winning church. That's really all I can say to that. To ask your parents to come visit Steadfast Baptist Church in Jacksonville, we've got a couple of single guys here, Theo, that perhaps could be a strong candidate for this lady in the chat room. Yeah, I agree. You come visit and you might meet your next, your husband. And one last message for Heather who asked the question, or didn't ask the question, but made a comment in the chat room about being married to someone who's unsaved. Don't lose hope. Don't ever lose hope because, guess what, your husband can get saved. It just takes him believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and he'll be saved. So don't lose hope, although it might seem like you're in a tough spot right now. There's a way out and it's the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news. Don't lose hope that he can believe and be saved and then you'll both be saved, which is what we would, I think, Theo, I'll speak for you here. I'm sure we both would like to see that happen for her. Moving on, let me ask you something else here. Preventing your marriage from getting stale. You've been married 15 years, Theo. That's a long time. That is the age of a teenager. Lots of things can happen in 15 years. I don't even remember what I was even doing with myself 15 years ago. But anyway, that is a long time. So you have the experience. And you would think that after 15 years, there are going to be moments where things get a little bit stale. It kind of reminds me of salvation. When you first get saved, it's that honeymoon period, if you will. You're excited. You're on fire. You understand what eternal life is. You have it. You've believed on Christ. You've realized you can never lose it. And you're going to church and you're trying to understand as much Bible as you can, and then slowly as you inch your way through the Christian life, things tend to really slow down a little bit. But then you go to a conference and you get jazzed up again. Or you find a way to stay disciplined and be free to thrive at your church and keep your Christian life energized and ready to go. And with marriage, I think the same thing could happen. You get married. You have the big celebration. Your family's there to witness it. You take a bunch of pictures. Your bride looks beautiful. And then things slow down a little bit. How do you prevent that? Obviously, okay, you're going to have times where things are slower than other times. But you don't want the marriage to fall off a cliff because you're just completely bored. How do you keep your marriage alive? Just as sure as you can have a dead faith, but it's still faith, right? It's still going to get you to heaven. People say faith without works is dead. Well, you don't want to have a dead faith, but even if you do, you'll still go to heaven. Well, you can have a dead marriage. It doesn't mean you're not married, but it's dead. But it's dead. There's a relationship in there anymore. You don't go out on dates anymore and things like that. What advice would you give to someone who's been married for a while? Things are starting to get stale. How do they jumpstart that? Well, at the very least, I would say remember your anniversary, the date that you got married, and remember your wife's birthday. I have difficulty remembering my own birthday, but if you can remember your own birthday, that would be good, too, because those are milestones throughout the year that don't go away. So if you can just maintain those three dates, make those dates special. Your anniversary is always going to be super special, so you should treat it as such. Get your wife something that she likes. Get her a card. I recommend writing in the card. Buy a card that has some text already in there. I would say write your own note to your wife. Take her out for a walk or a date. Buy her something nice, something that she likes, something that she's always wanted. So spend some money on that day. Pay special attention to your wife. This is the minimum. I'm saying the bare minimum is to remember these three dates. That's the date you got married, her birthday, which you want to do the same thing. You want to treat that day as a special day, even if she doesn't. Your wife may not think that her birthday is a special day, but still treat it as a special day anyway. It's a special thing, even if she doesn't think it's special, because you remembered that that was her birthday. You remember that. I think deep down most women like it when somebody is thinking about them, because they're very emotional creatures. So she's your wife. She's your wife, nobody else's. So you're the one who's responsible for that date. So remember her birthday. Also, your birthday. That just gives you an excuse to not be selfish, but be selfless and do something with her for your birthday. It's another date. I would say that date should fall after her birthday as far as the significance of it. But at a bare minimum, I would say remember those three dates, your anniversary, the date that you got married, her birthday. Make that special also, and then your birthday. Make that special for her as well. As a minimum, I think that would help to prevent some of the staleness. Now, just like you said, there's going to be times where it just gets stale. Either you get a new job and you have to reacclimate to that, or you'll move into a new house, get a new apartment. There are events just throughout life. You have a new baby. Someone's going to school or going away to school. You have parents that come in to visit. There's all these different things that come and kind of interrupt just the normal life between you and your wife. And so there will be some times where it goes a little stale, but when you recover from those events, let's say like Thanksgiving's coming up. That's an event typically where you're with your family, in-laws. A lot of times you don't want to be with your in-laws. You want to be with just your family. But that's a good time where after that event, you get acquainted with your wife. Get reacclimated to being with her and away from the in-laws and the turkey and everything. Christmas is coming up also. That's another big family thing. I would say spend that with your immediate family. But that's another event that can sometimes interrupt and cause your marriage to kind of be a little stale because you're focusing on other people. You're buying gifts for friends. You're buying gifts for family. A lot of times people will do a family reunion type of thing. And so you can use those holidays, any holidays, New Year's also, Easter, you can use those holidays as kind of a place to recover or to remove some of the staleness in your marriage. But primarily I would say your anniversary, at the bare minimum, your anniversary, her birthday, and your birthday. And if you could do that, I think that'll help a lot as far as avoiding staleness in the marriage. Well, there you have it. The advice there from the man who's been married 58% of my life. 50% of my life. Brother Theo, give me some advice. One thing that helped with me is I said at least once a week I'm going to take my wife out. At least once a week. And it doesn't always have to be a restaurant or eating out for dinner. I took her to the park a couple of weeks ago and we just played some soccer and were active together, just hanging out at the park doing what we enjoy doing. I took her ice skating the week after that. So be creative with it, I would say there, Theo. And I don't think it has to be the exact same thing. You don't have to go eat someplace. You could just go and spend time together, go to the park, go wherever makes you happy and be creative with it. And put some effort in. When people are dating, they're putting a ton of effort into those dates. They're trying to dress well and act in a presentable way and things like that to impress her. Well, you shouldn't ever stop impressing your significant other, I would say, Theo. Would you agree with that? Oh, yeah, definitely. And a part of the birthday and the anniversary, that's a special day. You definitely want to get a haircut, shower, be nice and presentable. It's a shame for a man to have long hair. That's viable. That's not Theo's opinion. That's the word of God. God's opinion. Cut your hair, guys. If you have a man bun, that's gross. Cut it. Now. Immediately. Come to Steadfast Baptist JAX and Marcel will take care of that for you. For a cheap price. He'll do it for you, man. He's a nice guy. Yeah, he will. He cut my hair a couple of weeks ago. That's right. I appreciate your time very much. There's so much we could have covered over the course of this podcast, but I didn't want to go all night. Perhaps I'll have you on again and we'll cover some of the things that we didn't get to on the show. Any last words for the audience before I wrap it up? I'll just say, you know, treat your marriage as a precious, I don't want to say commodity, but a precious jewel, a precious treasure. It's a very good thing. It's a blessing from God. And you will reap a lot of rewards, especially if you put effort into it. And marriage is a great thing. The D word divorce is from hell. Stay away from that. Yeah. And yeah. And trust the Lord. He will help you have a successful marriage. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you. That's a promise coming from the word of God Himself. And when you put it into practice, it's amazing what can happen in people's lives, for sure. I'm going to let you go now, Theo. Thanks again for your time. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to having you on again soon. All right. Thank you. You have a good night. All right. Bye. And that is Brother Theo Matthews from Steadfast Baptist JAX. And folks, if you haven't heard his preaching, you can do so on the Steadfast Baptist Jack's YouTube channel. Make sure you hit the subscribe button there and you can listen to him preach the word of God. That's it for this edition of the Sword of the Spirit podcast. It was episode number 18 right here on my YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe YouTube.com slash Ben the Baptist, where you can get content. You can get alerts rather whenever I upload new content. Not only do I have this live podcast, but I try and upload some videos throughout the week. That has slowed recently as I continue to work on editing the documentary, Censored the War on Free Speech. Censored the War on Free Speech, which I'm very excited about that project. It's an important one as we fight back against the censorship agenda, which is designed to silence Bible-believing Christians and silence broadcasts like this and churches that are preaching the whole Council of God and the New IFB movement. I want to say real quickly a thank you to Pastor Jonathan Shelley for the Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship this past week. I had so much fun at this conference. And if you've never been to a conference hosted by a New IFB church, I highly recommend that you go out and attend one. Whether it's the Red Hot Preaching Conference or MASA, the Make America Straight Again Conference, which I do believe is going to be happening again, and the Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship if Pastor Shelley decides to do that in 2020 one more time. I highly recommend that you take time off work, men, and you bring your wife, bring your kids, bring whoever you can or just yourself, if that's all you've got, to the conference. You will not regret it. The fellowship is amazing. You get to be around like-minded people of God talking about things that actually matter, not things that are vain. Out in the world, the only conversations you're going to have most of the time are things that are vain, just about the weather or small talk. But I love it when I'm around the people of God and I can talk about things that actually matter. I can talk about, for example, on this podcast, marriage, how to have a godly marriage, deep biblical topics, things that have some weight to them, weightier matters, if you will, rather than innocuous, vain, worldly garbage, which is what people who are unsaved, who don't go to church, are stuck with. Hey, man, how about them Dallas Cowboys? Who cares? The NFL is probably rigged anyway. It doesn't matter. What really matters are things like topics like this, marriage and godly issues and intelligent conversations. We were at a restaurant. I just want to say this real quick before I close the show. We were at a restaurant after the Sunday morning service at the Fire Breathing Baptist Fellowship. We're talking about Babylon, which is the United States, by the way. We're talking about end times Bible prophecy. We're talking about the Sodomites and how wicked and disgusting they are. We're having this deep conversation about the things of God. And there was this gentleman who wasn't part of our conversation who was sitting next to us. He overheard what we were talking about. He overheard the discussion. And he's like, hey, I just wanted to let you all know you guys seem like you're real smart talking about these cool things. And he heard what we were talking about and he was intrigued because he probably hadn't heard that before. Now, I'm not trying to puff myself up or make myself appear as if I'm smarter than anyone else or anything like that. All I'm saying is this. The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. And when you are talking about spiritual things and weightier matters and things that aren't vain, you're going to appear as if you're way more intelligent than the average person in the eyes of the average person because they're not used to hearing that. And so I would certainly recommend if you don't go to a church that's on fire for the Lord, that you find a way to do so. You won't regret it. And definitely if you have the means to go to the next conference, don't miss out. You'll have a lot of fun and you'll get a chance to make a real impact out soul winning and listen to world class preaching at the conference. Until next time, this is Benjamin Naim signing off. I want to thank you all very much for tuning into the program. I'll be back again next Monday night at 9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, as usual, for another edition of the Sword of the Spirit podcast right here on the channel. Thanks to everyone in the chat room. I really appreciate your support from Grammy7, Keith Hendrix, Shade753. We've also got DeafBread, hopefully I pronounced that right. I saw Mark Conway in there and others. Thanks for tuning in and I hope that you continue to do so. God bless you all and I'll talk to you guys again after a while. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.