Artwork for podcast The Will Spencer Podcast
AARON SMITH - Finding Hope in Marriage: Glorifying God in Our Unions
Episode 214 • 17th January 2025 • The Will Spencer Podcast • Will Spencer
00:00:00 01:34:04

Share Episode

Shownotes

Aaron Smith, co-founder of Marriage After God, articulates the essential role of faith in navigating the complexities of marriage and relationships. He reflects on his own journey, including the challenges he and his wife faced early in their marriage, and how those experiences shaped their mission to help others.

Smith emphasizes that both men and women have a vital part to play in fostering healthy relationships and that mentorship from older generations can significantly impact younger couples. He calls for a collective effort to strengthen the Christian community through intentional relationships, prayer, and a commitment to living out biblical principles in everyday life.

Takeaways:

  • Aaron Smith emphasizes the importance of trusting God in the pursuit of marriage and family.
  • He highlights that men often overthink their readiness for marriage due to societal pressures.
  • Smith encourages individuals to focus on personal growth before seeking a spouse.
  • He believes that prayer is a powerful tool for preparing oneself for marriage.
  • The conversation reveals the importance of older generations mentoring younger ones in faith.
  • Marriage is seen as a ministry, where couples can support and uplift each other spiritually.

CONNECT WITH AARON

🌟 The Will Spencer Podcast was formerly known as "The Renaissance of Men."

FOLLOW US FOR MORE

Buy Me a Coffee

FREE Men's Chastity Guide

Communications Powered by PaxMail

The Will Spencer Podcast is a weekly interview show featuring extended discussions with authors, leaders, and influencers who can help us make sense of our changing world today. I release new episodes every week on Friday.

ADVERTISERS

Mentioned in this episode:

Puritan Treasures

Reformation Heritage Books offers 16 Puritan classics full of wisdom that's sustained believers through centuries of challenge and change. Use code SPENCER for 10% off.

https://heritagebooks.org/

Cross & Stripes

Celebrate American craftsmanship with metalwork and apparel that's built to last. Use code SPENCER for 35% off your first order.

Cross & Stripes

Transcripts

Aaron Smith:

Foreign.

Will Spencer:

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer:

This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.

Will Spencer:

New episodes release every Friday.

Will Spencer:

My guest this week is Aaron Smith, half of the online ministry Marriage After God.

Will Spencer:

He and his wife Jennifer have become bestselling authors, podcast hosts and more, helping Christian singles and married couples align their faith in the direction of family in a Christian courtship climate that often feels hopeless.

Will Spencer:

Overwhelmed with frightening statistics of young women leaving church, men failing to launch declining marriage and birth rates, and shocking divorce stories, Aaron and Jennifer take a different approach.

Will Spencer:

Faithfulness Be faithful to who God has called you to be as a man or woman.

Will Spencer:

We have a loving Father in heaven.

Will Spencer:

Listen to him, follow him, be obedient to him and his commands about becoming and being a spouse and then a parent and let the rest take care of itself.

Will Spencer:

Not only because you can't fix the world and neither can I.

Will Spencer:

It's literally not our job, it's Christ's, and He's the man for it.

Will Spencer:

Instead, we are called to fix ourselves and our lives with his help.

Will Spencer:

If we're scared to commit, we have to overcome that.

Will Spencer:

If we're resisting the call to righteous and mature adulthood embodied in marriage and parenting, we have to overcome that too.

Will Spencer:

If we're too busy arguing online or scrolling or browsing, we have to get past that to become the husbands and wives, mothers and fathers we can be and reap those spiritual rewards naturally in our hyper politicized, extremely online world of digital fear.

Will Spencer:

That message probably sounds a bit out of step with the times, and if it does, good, because I don't put my hope in the world, and neither should you.

Will Spencer:

We as Christians have the opportunity and responsibility to put our hope in Christ and our faith in God and be obedient as little children.

Will Spencer:

And because God's word is true, we'll discover, amidst our anxiety, the reality of Psalm 23, which you've heard before.

Will Spencer:

But I'd like to read to you now.

Will Spencer:

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

Will Spencer:

He makes me to lie down in green pastures.

Will Spencer:

He leads me beside the still waters.

Will Spencer:

He restores my soul.

Will Spencer:

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Will Spencer:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

Will Spencer:

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Will Spencer:

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.

Will Spencer:

You anoint my head with oil, my cup runs over.

Will Spencer:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Will Spencer:

This is the spirit that I see informing the work of Aaron and Jennifer Smith and marriage after God.

Will Spencer:

There's a peacefulness around it, a promise, a faithfulness that isn't sensational, but it is godly.

Will Spencer:

And it's here to remind us that while the search for a mate is often more difficult and fraught than any other time in history, God's word does not return void.

Will Spencer:

Again, God's word does not return void so we, as single, courting, engaged and married people, get to make a choice.

Will Spencer:

Whose word will we listen to?

Will Spencer:

Feminism or her son?

Will Spencer:

The manosphere?

Will Spencer:

Will we listen to the mainstream media and Hollywood?

Will Spencer:

Our secular relatives?

Will Spencer:

Our unredeemed parents, if we have them?

Will Spencer:

Romance novels, YouTube videos, or Twitter influencers?

Will Spencer:

Yes, those voices are super plentiful and super loud.

Will Spencer:

But Aaron and Jennifer's work lovingly guides us away from all of them, turning down the volume so God can speak about his design and desires for us and how to go about fulfilling them.

Will Spencer:

It's a hard message for men and women, yes, or at least a challenging one.

Will Spencer:

But it's the truth.

Will Spencer:

And we're either ready to hear it and die to ourselves forever, men and women to get the rich blessings that are on the other side.

Will Spencer:

Or we're not.

Will Spencer:

And we'll have to stand before God and answer for that.

Will Spencer:

I believe.

Will Spencer:

So in this conversation, may Aaron's story inspire you.

Will Spencer:

May his words reach you.

Will Spencer:

May the resources he and his wife provide turn your heart.

Will Spencer:

And may you see, just for a moment, the promise that lies for us as men and women Ahead.

Will Spencer:

Because that's what happened for me now, friends, we're not just recording conversations on the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer:

We're part of a restoration project for Christian civilization in the West.

Will Spencer:

And I need you in this fight with me.

Will Spencer:

So when you visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts, take a moment to write how these conversations impacted you.

Will Spencer:

Your words might be exactly what someone needs to hear to give this show their first listen.

Will Spencer:

Those conversations that shifted your thinking?

Will Spencer:

Share them.

Will Spencer:

We're in a war for the soul of our culture, and these conversations are ammunition for the right side.

Will Spencer:

For those ready to go deeper, visit willspencerpod.substack.com or and become a paid subscriber for ad free interviews and exclusive content.

Will Spencer:

And remember, our sponsors aren't just businesses, they're allies, building Christian economic strength for generations.

Will Spencer:

Supporting them isn't just spending money, it's investing in an American Reformation.

Will Spencer:

And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast from Marriage After God, Aaron Smith.

Will Spencer:

Aaron Smith from Marriage After God.

Will Spencer:

Thanks so much for joining me on the Will Spencer podcast.

Aaron Smith:

Will, thanks for having me, man.

Aaron Smith:

Excited.

Will Spencer:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you.

Will Spencer:

We got to chat, I don't know was that one or two months ago and get to know each other.

Will Spencer:

And I've just really enjoyed and as we talked about before, I've really enjoyed yours and your wife's perspective on courtship, dating and marriage.

Will Spencer:

It's very hopeful in a time when I think a lot of people are very frightened about their, their marriage prospects.

Will Spencer:

And, and I've really appreciated your approach to being encouraging to men and women who are worried about this set of topics.

Aaron Smith:

Let's say thank you.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, it's, it's been on Jennifer and I's heart for as long as we've been married.

Aaron Smith:

Even before we were married, I had a big vision for when I was younger.

Aaron Smith:

Does it really desire to be a husband?

Aaron Smith:

And being a father came later, of course, as in my desire because that's something that the world didn't really instill in me, a good, good idea of what being a father was like.

Aaron Smith:

But the Lord changed that in my heart after we got married and now I got six kids.

Aaron Smith:

So.

Will Spencer:

Oh my goodness.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, definitely, definitely working my way up there up the ladder of fatherhood and trying to figure that out.

Aaron Smith:

But yeah, we do live in a pretty strange situation.

Will Spencer:

Number seven.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, well, my kids are begging my, my wife to, our youngest is four months old and they're already begging her to have another one.

Aaron Smith:

And she's like, guys, chill.

Will Spencer:

Can we slow this down, please?

Aaron Smith:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

Anyway, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

Aaron Smith:

It's okay.

Aaron Smith:

No, it's a big deal.

Aaron Smith:

But there is hope for especially believers like we having a heart of a desire for marriage.

Aaron Smith:

The Bible says that that's a good thing to desire, desire a wife.

Aaron Smith:

And, and so I just, I hope to see more and more believers getting connected and not being unequally yoked, you know, not connect, not trying to get attached to the world.

Aaron Smith:

And I just trying to say, well, I can't find anyone here.

Aaron Smith:

I'm going to go there.

Aaron Smith:

But really trust in the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

That's what I had to do.

Aaron Smith:

I think it's kind of what God wants all of us as believers to do is to trust him with every aspect, aspect of our life, especially our spouses.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, that's, I'm very fortunate that I have both men and women who listen to this podcast and married couples as well, and so have the opportunity to speak into both sides of this challenge, because I think men and women face slightly different challenges.

Will Spencer:

In some ways, the challenges are very similar.

Will Spencer:

You know, delaying marriage, you know, worrying about am I ready?

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

The general lack of.

Will Spencer:

Lack of seeming lack of partners in the.

Will Spencer:

In the.

Will Spencer:

In the marriage pool.

Will Spencer:

But I think that there are a lot of people that do have a heart for it.

Will Spencer:

So why don't we start with speaking to the men?

Will Spencer:

So let's rewind the clock back to when you got married, kind of where you were at and the thoughts that.

Will Spencer:

The thoughts that you were having at the time.

Will Spencer:

Obviously, it was a very different climate back then.

Will Spencer:

There's probably not a whole ton of online dating, very different social climate.

Will Spencer:

But you.

Will Spencer:

It sounds like you had some.

Will Spencer:

Some worries, some lack of.

Will Spencer:

Some knowledge gaps, but you still boldly stepped into marriage.

Will Spencer:

And maybe we can talk a little bit about that yet.

Aaron Smith:

Excuse me.

Aaron Smith:

It was a totally different time, totally different climate.

Aaron Smith:

I don't think it's hard.

Aaron Smith:

I say this with respect to people that are single right now, but I don't envy those that are single in the current climate we're in.

Aaron Smith:

But to be honest, back when I was young, adult, young man, wanted to be married, there was no training, there was no understanding, at least from my personal life.

Aaron Smith:

I'm sure some people out there have got, you know, had fathers and mothers that.

Aaron Smith:

That guided them and gave them really good, clear direction and what to look for and what to think about and what marriage is and what we are as men, becoming husbands one day and then eventually fathers.

Aaron Smith:

I.

Aaron Smith:

I didn't know what I was doing.

Aaron Smith:

I didn't know what I was looking for.

Aaron Smith:

And you kind of get, as a single person, as a believer specifically, but any single person gets thrown into this mix of like, well, you're single, and you have to figure out what it means to be you alone.

Aaron Smith:

And at the same time, if you desire to be married, you got to figure out what it means to become a husband one day.

Aaron Smith:

And there's all these thoughts of, how do I know if I'm ready?

Aaron Smith:

When am I ready?

Aaron Smith:

What kind of person am I looking for?

Aaron Smith:

How do I know it's the right person?

Aaron Smith:

How do I know when to make pop the question.

Aaron Smith:

How do I know?

Aaron Smith:

There's all these things and.

Aaron Smith:

And I don't know where they came from, all these questions and ideas on how to pursue a person.

Aaron Smith:

You know, if you think about history, up until the 21st century, it wasn't that way.

Aaron Smith:

It was much simpler of a concept of, well, you are a man, you become a husband.

Aaron Smith:

You know, in general, it was rare to just remain a single person.

Aaron Smith:

That happened.

Aaron Smith:

And the Bible even talks about that, that some people have different giftings.

Aaron Smith:

But I would venture to say that the majority of men and women are meant to be married, are meant to start families, are meant to.

Aaron Smith:

That's exactly what God calls us to in Genesis chapter one and two.

Aaron Smith:

And then he tells Noah the same exact thing.

Aaron Smith:

Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.

Aaron Smith:

And that's one of his desires for family.

Aaron Smith:

And that's what is one of his desires, is for men.

Aaron Smith:

And so I'm young and I'm thrown into this mix and I'm thinking about it, of course, I'm like, I want to be married, I want a wife.

Aaron Smith:

I'm thinking about wanting to remain pure and wanting to wait for marriage, for sex.

Aaron Smith:

And so in my mind I'm like, well, I want sex.

Aaron Smith:

And that's a big deal to me.

Aaron Smith:

And so I gotta get married, I gotta figure that out.

Aaron Smith:

And there's.

Aaron Smith:

So there's this biological draw which all of us have.

Aaron Smith:

Women have a biological clock.

Aaron Smith:

They start recognizing when they're fertile and ready to go and, you know, ready to have children.

Aaron Smith:

That's the internal biological driving us, the how God designed us.

Aaron Smith:

And it's a good thing.

Aaron Smith:

When you're younger, you have higher testosterone.

Aaron Smith:

We listen to all these podcasts that talk about men's health and it makes sense.

Aaron Smith:

The higher testosterone causes you to do more outgoing things, more adventurous things, more dangerous things, as in going to talk to a woman seems pretty dangerous sometimes.

Aaron Smith:

And then that biological draw that God put in us drives us to seek a mate, seek a wife.

Aaron Smith:

But then God desires us to do it his way, desires us to be patient, desires us to be self control, desires to be honorable and wise and all of these things on top of that.

Aaron Smith:

And so there's no, I don't think there's an easy answer other than I think there are more things that we've added on top of this pursuit of a wife, of a spouse, this understanding of marriage that makes it harder to find a spouse and find a wife and start a family.

Aaron Smith:

That is this question of when am I ready?

Aaron Smith:

That's a big question.

Aaron Smith:

Okay, so is it when you're financially ready?

Aaron Smith:

Is it when you're mature enough?

Aaron Smith:

Is it when you've stopped sinning in this certain way?

Aaron Smith:

Is it when are you ready?

Aaron Smith:

That is such a subjective question.

Aaron Smith:

It literally has no black and white answer.

Aaron Smith:

There's no.

Aaron Smith:

It's just, well, when are you ready?

Aaron Smith:

What's your time?

Aaron Smith:

What's.

Aaron Smith:

And then the other question is like, okay.

Aaron Smith:

Then you add on top of that, like, well, this person I'm interested in, when are they ready?

Aaron Smith:

Now you have two subjective truths that you're looking for an answer to.

Aaron Smith:

And that's a, that's a hard thing to nail down.

Aaron Smith:

Is it when you've bought a house?

Aaron Smith:

Is it when you've put enough in savings?

Aaron Smith:

Cause we hear these all the time, like, oh, you don't have enough money.

Aaron Smith:

You haven't, you know, had enough fun yet.

Aaron Smith:

You haven't been.

Aaron Smith:

You haven't lived alone yet, you haven't saved enough money.

Aaron Smith:

You don't have the career you want yet you don't have.

Aaron Smith:

All of these things are completely subjective and to be honest, may or may not have anything to do with God's will for your life and God's desire for who you are as a person.

Will Spencer:

That's right.

Aaron Smith:

So we ask that question to ourselves and then it causes us paralysis.

Aaron Smith:

We're like, well, I don't know, maybe I'm not ready, maybe I shouldn't.

Aaron Smith:

But in essence, the simplicity of readiness is, it boils down to willingness.

Aaron Smith:

It's like, are you ready currently to vow to a single person for the rest of your life?

Aaron Smith:

It doesn't matter, because to be honest, you could be ready now.

Aaron Smith:

Have million dollars in the bank account, no debt, you own your own house, you have the career you want, okay, you find a bride and you're like, I'm ready.

Aaron Smith:

You get married and you could lose it all the next day.

Aaron Smith:

So are you now you're not ready.

Aaron Smith:

And so did you make a mistake?

Aaron Smith:

Did you?

Aaron Smith:

All of those things on trying to figure out what's the right timing, what's the.

Aaron Smith:

Those are all subjective and I think they're all ancillary to the reality of marriage.

Aaron Smith:

Really comes down to are you willing to commit?

Aaron Smith:

Are you ready to commit?

Aaron Smith:

And that has nothing to do with your bank account or the career you have, or if you own a home or if you even have a car.

Aaron Smith:

Now some of those things might be good to pursue and be.

Aaron Smith:

And as a man, you should be pursuing those things.

Aaron Smith:

But my mother in law, before we got married, she was very nervous.

Aaron Smith:

You know, I'm fresh out of college, I don't really have a career, I'm doing some youth pastoring.

Aaron Smith:

And she's like, I'm just afraid that you're not gonna be able to take care of my daughter.

Aaron Smith:

And I said, well, I said, I can't promise you that for the rest of my life I'm gonna be able to perfectly take care of her.

Aaron Smith:

Cause I literally can't promise that I'm probably gonna go through hardships.

Aaron Smith:

I said, but I promise you this, that I'm gonna do everything in my power to make sure I can to the best of my ability.

Aaron Smith:

Like that.

Aaron Smith:

That's the promise.

Aaron Smith:

That's the only promise I can make, is that I'm gonna do the best I can to take care of your daughter for the rest of her life.

Aaron Smith:

And that was enough to, like, give her peace.

Aaron Smith:

That, like, well, you may not have the money that I wish you had or the.

Aaron Smith:

The career that I wish you had or, you know, but your heart is for her.

Aaron Smith:

And that's what we should be looking about, looking at is, well, if my readiness should be based on my.

Aaron Smith:

My willingness in my heart, not my bank account or, you know, owning of a home or anything like that.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know if that answers your question.

Aaron Smith:

That was a lot.

Will Spencer:

No, that.

Will Spencer:

That actually answered my question on the bullseye.

Will Spencer:

Because I interact with a lot of men these days who say those exact things.

Will Spencer:

Well, when I have the right career, when I have enough money saved up, when I own my own home, et cetera, et cetera.

Will Spencer:

And the tendency is you can't actually control when any of those things will happen.

Will Spencer:

There are any number of things that can happen on any given day that make achieving your material goals bring them closer or make them much further away in an instant.

Will Spencer:

And so I see that men fall into this temptation of waiting until they hit some metric, and then they're ready to settle down and get married.

Will Spencer:

And by that point, they're far older than they could or perhaps should have been.

Will Spencer:

And so there's this pushing it down the track and, you know, trying to get men to confront that.

Will Spencer:

Like, that's.

Will Spencer:

You're just trying to avoid the responsibility is what I sort of chalk that up to.

Will Spencer:

It's very easy for a man to say, you know, oh, I'm.

Will Spencer:

I'm not ready yet, when inside it's like he knows that marriage is a death to self.

Will Spencer:

He's losing a version of himself forever.

Aaron Smith:

Exactly.

Will Spencer:

So it's nice.

Will Spencer:

It's okay.

Will Spencer:

Cool.

Will Spencer:

I thought.

Will Spencer:

I thought I was crazy, but.

Will Spencer:

But it sounds like.

Will Spencer:

It sounds like you nailed it.

Aaron Smith:

Well, and.

Aaron Smith:

And that's exactly what it is in reality.

Aaron Smith:

Timothy Keller talks about this, and I believe it's in meaning of marriage.

Aaron Smith:

He talks about this idea of like who, who you're going to marry doesn't exist yet because you haven't married her yet.

Aaron Smith:

You know, like you said, like, you cease to be the, the version of you before marriage will immediately cease to exist because you immediately become one with another person.

Aaron Smith:

You're no longer a single entity and you're, you're a unified entity.

Aaron Smith:

And your identity then gets wrapped up in you and her, not you someday with her.

Aaron Smith:

And that's right.

Aaron Smith:

And the fear, I think a lot of men have and women have the same.

Aaron Smith:

They might have a different list of criteria of readiness, but it's the same thing, it's the same fear that holds back.

Aaron Smith:

And what it comes down to is if you can ask yourself this question, like, is a spouse going to hinder you from meeting those goals?

Aaron Smith:

Is that what we're really saying is I can't get to my career or my level of savings or my with a spouse?

Aaron Smith:

Because all of the statistics say the opposite.

Will Spencer:

That's right.

Aaron Smith:

Men and women are more happy on average when they're married.

Aaron Smith:

Men and women are more wealthy on average when they're married.

Aaron Smith:

They have better savings, they have better satisfaction in life, they have less depression, they're healthier.

Aaron Smith:

Now there's probably individual situations that are different, but the average, across the board, that is true and it makes sense because that's something that God designed marriage to be, is two are better than one.

Aaron Smith:

They have a better return for their labor.

Aaron Smith:

And so if we're navigating and our logic is I can't get married yet because I haven't become the person I want to be yet to be married, whatever that may be, definition wise, that identity, then what you're saying is a wife or a husband is going to hinder me from becoming that, when in reality they will most likely, especially believers when they're walking with Christ together, are going to help each other become more like what God wants them to be, not what they want to be.

Aaron Smith:

So it's a big deal.

Aaron Smith:

I think we need to be asking ourselves, the single men and women in this world who love God, am I hindering God from doing what he wants through a spouse with me?

Aaron Smith:

Because I'm trying to ancillarily, you know, build my self identity before I even find, you know, or say yes to that spouse.

Will Spencer:

So I can, I can hear all kinds of.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, but questions exploding in the, in the minds of young men.

Will Spencer:

Don't worry, guys, we're gonna, we're gonna get to that.

Will Spencer:

We're gonna get to Those.

Will Spencer:

But I wanna.

Will Spencer:

I wanna.

Will Spencer:

We will.

Will Spencer:

I.

Will Spencer:

I wanna.

Will Spencer:

I wanna throw a curveball and.

Will Spencer:

And see.

Will Spencer:

And see what you think about this.

Will Spencer:

So there's a.

Will Spencer:

There's a feeling.

Will Spencer:

There's.

Will Spencer:

There's an aphorism that I think would describe the.

Will Spencer:

The feeling that I think many men would be feeling.

Will Spencer:

The aphorism is if you want to go fast, go alone.

Will Spencer:

If you want to go far, go together.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

There's a.

Will Spencer:

There's a sense in that, you know, a man traveling alone can travel faster down the road than if he were traveling with either another man or a woman or kids or something like that.

Will Spencer:

So what if a man feels like.

Will Spencer:

Well, but during this time, I can.

Will Spencer:

I feel like I can really go monk mode and grind it out and kind of like make it to the top of that next hill, and then I can run up the hill.

Will Spencer:

And then when I get up the hill, that's when I'll.

Will Spencer:

That's when I'll do that.

Will Spencer:

What would you say to that guy?

Aaron Smith:

Um, I would say that there's a.

Aaron Smith:

A yes and a no to that.

Aaron Smith:

There's like a.

Aaron Smith:

There's a reason it's valuable and there's a reason it's.

Aaron Smith:

It's a fallacy.

Aaron Smith:

Because if.

Aaron Smith:

If in my situation I was, you know, I had my first girlfriend, you know, early adulthood, and broke that off.

Aaron Smith:

And that was kind of my catalyst of, like, I'm going to not date, not going to pursue.

Aaron Smith:

I'm going to focus on my relationship with God.

Aaron Smith:

And so I went into a season of, like.

Aaron Smith:

Because there was all this energy being put out, trying to figure out, like, who's my spouse looking, and it was drawing me, and it felt exhausting.

Aaron Smith:

And so I was like, you know, I'm going to do the opposite of that.

Aaron Smith:

I'm going to say no to, you know, looking for a spouse right now.

Aaron Smith:

And I'm just going to focus my attention on growing in the Lord and becoming a husband, becoming the kind of man that I want to be for a future wife.

Aaron Smith:

And that was about three years where I wasn't.

Aaron Smith:

I mean, I had friends.

Aaron Smith:

I had friends that were girls.

Aaron Smith:

I spent time with lots of people.

Aaron Smith:

It's not like I was a hermit, but I wasn't intentionally trying to put my eyes on anyone and pursue that and try relationships and whatever.

Aaron Smith:

And then there was.

Aaron Smith:

At the end of that three years, there was something that shifted in my heart, and I was like, okay, I want to start looking for a wife.

Aaron Smith:

I want to be married.

Aaron Smith:

I want a wife.

Aaron Smith:

So it wasn't like it was forever, but there was definitely a short season of me intentionally focusing on my walk with God.

Aaron Smith:

But that's often not what people are doing when they remain single.

Aaron Smith:

They're often building their own identity apart from marriage.

Aaron Smith:

It's not just, I'm pursuing the Lord to get ready for marriage, and then when he is ready for me to start opening my heart up to that again, I'm going to do that.

Aaron Smith:

It's a different thing.

Aaron Smith:

It's a control thing.

Aaron Smith:

Where mine wasn't a control thing.

Aaron Smith:

It was a intentional choice to take my eyes off of this over here and put it on God over here.

Aaron Smith:

But then there was a clear moment that I remembered.

Aaron Smith:

God was like, it's okay.

Aaron Smith:

Start looking.

Aaron Smith:

And I'm like, okay.

Aaron Smith:

And so I had my eyes open.

Aaron Smith:

Doesn't mean I just started dating everyone.

Aaron Smith:

But I was like, I'm going to be very intentional in my relationships for the purpose of looking for a wife.

Aaron Smith:

So I think there should be.

Aaron Smith:

There's nothing wrong with seasons of I'm going to go alone for the purpose of pursuing Christ.

Aaron Smith:

But that for someone who doesn't have the gift of celibacy, doesn't have the gift of singleness, it shouldn't be forever.

Aaron Smith:

It should be with a purpose of prepare me for that wife that you're bringing to me or that you're gonna help me be a better seer, a better discerner, a better pursuer, and same for women.

Aaron Smith:

So I think on one hand it's, yeah, I can go alone and I'm gonna go faster.

Aaron Smith:

But you might run right past her, right?

Aaron Smith:

So it depends on, you know, is your goal at the end of the day, is your goal that.

Aaron Smith:

I have a little story talking about parenting.

Aaron Smith:

But is your goal to become what Christ wants you to become?

Aaron Smith:

Or is your goal to become what you want you to be?

Aaron Smith:

Because a spouse is going to get in the way of that 100% of the time.

Aaron Smith:

A spouse won't get in the way of you becoming what Christ wants you to be, but a spouse will get in the way of you becoming who you want to be.

Aaron Smith:

And that's where you get a lot of the conflict in marriage.

Aaron Smith:

When you rub up against each other and you're like, I want this and they want that, and you neither want the same thing.

Aaron Smith:

And that's hard.

Aaron Smith:

But when, before we had our first child, before we got pregnant with our first child, we were both in a place where we didn't want any kids.

Aaron Smith:

We're Christians, we're Married.

Aaron Smith:

We loved God, but we also were very honest about our selfishness.

Aaron Smith:

And we had a.

Aaron Smith:

We had hearts against having kids.

Aaron Smith:

And there was this opportunity that we were part of a marriage ministry, not leading it, but we were just in a marriage ministry in our church.

Aaron Smith:

And there was a need for someone to replace the pastor that was doing that.

Aaron Smith:

And so I had been asked to interim pastor this marriage ministry.

Aaron Smith:

And I was like, okay, sure.

Aaron Smith:

Because, like, I have a gifting of teaching.

Aaron Smith:

I can.

Aaron Smith:

I can speak, I can share the things that are, you know, to get everyone on board and.

Aaron Smith:

But I'm sitting there and I'm.

Aaron Smith:

I just go to the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

After one of the nights that we met, before I started doing it, I was like, God, how am I supposed to.

Aaron Smith:

There's a bunch of people here more, you know, older than me, married longer than me, have children.

Aaron Smith:

Like, how am I supposed to do this?

Aaron Smith:

I don't feel at all adequate to do this.

Aaron Smith:

And I remember praying, and I was like, I just need to know.

Aaron Smith:

Like, I feel like I don't even know enough of you.

Aaron Smith:

And I remember I didn't hear the audible voice of God, but he clearly was sharing with me.

Aaron Smith:

He said, if you want to know more of me, he said, there's a side of me that you'll never be able to know unless you become a father.

Aaron Smith:

And I was like, huh?

Aaron Smith:

And it was in reference to wanting to, you know, lead well and be able to understand and relate to the other people in this church and in this marriage ministry.

Aaron Smith:

And God, in a single moment, changed my heart from.

Aaron Smith:

I don't want kids.

Aaron Smith:

That seems too hard.

Aaron Smith:

That's not the right thing to.

Aaron Smith:

I.

Aaron Smith:

If I want to know the father heart of God, I need to become a father.

Aaron Smith:

It was an instant.

Aaron Smith:

And what's crazy is God had worked on my wife at the same time.

Aaron Smith:

And so when I went and told her what I said, she's like, I've been feeling the same thing.

Aaron Smith:

I was like, crazy.

Aaron Smith:

So there's times that, like, marriage does something for us that is very unique.

Aaron Smith:

God designed it in a very unique way that it helps us become what Christ wants us to be.

Aaron Smith:

There's things that we can't experience and understand without it.

Aaron Smith:

It doesn't mean that every single.

Aaron Smith:

Like I said, there's a very rare occurrence, rare occurrence that Paul talks about where there are some that are gifted with singleness, and all they worry about is the Lord and the work of the Lord and missionaries doing mission work, and there's plenty of place for that.

Aaron Smith:

But the Majority of us need a spouse.

Aaron Smith:

God wants to fill the earth with children who know him.

Aaron Smith:

He wants husbands to learn sacrifice and unconditional love.

Aaron Smith:

And he wants wives to learn submission and service and compassion and how to raise children.

Aaron Smith:

And he wants husbands to become men who teach their boys what men are and women to teach their girls what women are.

Aaron Smith:

And this is, this was God's plan from the beginning to populate the earth, to make government, governments to is, is the family unit and how it operates.

Aaron Smith:

And so just like God was like, you want to know the, you know, the side of me that's a father and like as, and you, you've known me as my child, you know, as a, as a son.

Aaron Smith:

But you don't understand what it means to be a father unless you become a father.

Aaron Smith:

You don't understand what it means to be a husband and to lead a family unless you become a husband.

Aaron Smith:

And I just had an encouraging conversation with my wife who, I mean, we had our sixth child and it's legit.

Aaron Smith:

It could be hard.

Aaron Smith:

It's a struggle at times, I bet.

Aaron Smith:

Not just keeping six children alive, but raising them to be wise, discerning, godly humans.

Aaron Smith:

It's nearly impossible.

Aaron Smith:

And I was explaining to her, I said, you know, because she was just saying, this is so hard.

Aaron Smith:

And I was like, you know, it is.

Aaron Smith:

I was like, we're not enough.

Aaron Smith:

We need Jesus to help us do this.

Aaron Smith:

And then I said that the most powerful and most successful by the world's standards, people in the world often have failed in many ways or in every way in their marriages and families.

Aaron Smith:

I was like, so what that tells me is having a family is harder than starting a space exploration company.

Aaron Smith:

It's harder than starting an electric car company.

Aaron Smith:

It's harder than starting a multi billion dollar company and running it and having tens of thousands or millions of employees.

Aaron Smith:

Having a healthy family is the hardest thing to do on the planet.

Aaron Smith:

Being a husband and dealing with the heart of a woman and still being a godly man and then also still managing friendships and relationships and then all of these things and then at the same time leading them to Christ and then still dealing with your own sin and your own confusions and the lies that you believe and feelings of failure and all of those things and then still trying to move forward and create something that's valuable and worthy.

Aaron Smith:

It's the hardest thing.

Aaron Smith:

It's the hardest thing in the whole world.

Will Spencer:

Thank you for saying that.

Will Spencer:

Thank you for everything that you just said.

Will Spencer:

That is a clip that I hope people will Go and back up and just listen to that entire last segment because I think it contains a lot of very wise advice, particularly for young men and aspirational fathers to hear, to come out of what might be unconscious, selfish attitudes.

Will Spencer:

It is very easy to remain a single man and to only have to care for one guy.

Will Spencer:

It is easy to be able to manage your own time or not manage your own time or manage your own money or not manage your own money when you're responsible to no one and not accountable to the person sleeping next to you, who sees things very differently and sees into and through you as well.

Will Spencer:

Because men and women are quite insightful about each other.

Will Spencer:

And so it's easy.

Will Spencer:

It's very easy for.

Will Spencer:

For men to hide and remain in kind of a boyish state and avoid stepping into learning about the father, heart of God, learning that true side of God's character, you know, by staying a boy and not becoming a man.

Will Spencer:

And it's also.

Will Spencer:

It's also very timely.

Will Spencer:

You're.

Will Spencer:

You seem like a very smart man, so you're probably not on X.

Will Spencer:

Are you on X at all?

Aaron Smith:

I am on X, actually.

Will Spencer:

Oh, okay.

Aaron Smith:

I mainly use it for.

Aaron Smith:

We post our prayers on there, but I mainly use it for news.

Will Spencer:

Okay.

Will Spencer:

So perhaps you've seen that Mr.

Will Spencer:

Andrew Tate is back in the news.

Will Spencer:

Have you seen that?

Aaron Smith:

Yes, I periodically see stuff about Andrew Tate.

Aaron Smith:

Yes.

Will Spencer:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

So.

Will Spencer:

Particularly him.

Will Spencer:

But really, this whole dialogue about masculinity, by the way, it doesn't mean you're not smart because you're on ex.

Will Spencer:

I just wanted to clarify.

Will Spencer:

I'm not doing a backhanded.

Will Spencer:

So.

Will Spencer:

So he's popped into the news again.

Will Spencer:

I don't know, probably because he started some political party in the uk, I'm not sure.

Will Spencer:

But so particularly in.

Will Spencer:

In.

Will Spencer:

In.

Will Spencer:

In my world of Christianity, that dialogue has exploded the past, say, 48, 72 hours about masculinity and what it means to be a man and Andrew Tate and why he has this appeal to young men.

Will Spencer:

And.

Will Spencer:

And I.

Will Spencer:

I wanted to highlight that particularly because there have been several very, very valid, very powerful, and I think, even devastating critiques of him, like how can you talk about what it means to be a man as if.

Will Spencer:

As if you're an authority figure, if you haven't stepped into the most basic responsibility of being a man, which all throughout history has been recognized to be a husband, a man to one woman, and a father to more than one child.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

A child or one child or more.

Aaron Smith:

Right.

Will Spencer:

How can you talk about what it means to be a man when really you're just a giant overgrown boy with your toys and cigars and there's nothing wrong with fast cars and a good cigar.

Will Spencer:

However, isn't there this other side of what it means to be a man that it seems that he's.

Will Spencer:

Maybe he sired children, but that doesn't make him a father.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

And he's certainly not married.

Will Spencer:

And so I think what you, everything that you just said right there speaks so powerfully into something that I think culture has suppressed in men to some extent.

Will Spencer:

And I want, I do want to get into that, but that also men suppress in themselves.

Will Spencer:

And let's not, we shouldn't be pointing all the fingers like culture did this, the post war consensus, whatever, right?

Will Spencer:

No, it's like you've got some sin, bro.

Will Spencer:

You've got some fear and some, and some hiding that you're doing as well.

Will Spencer:

And, and men shouldn't, men must be called to overcome that within themselves.

Will Spencer:

And so I heard in what you said a very powerful call to do that.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, and you're right there.

Aaron Smith:

And there's, you know, people like Andrew Tate and there's, he's not the only one.

Aaron Smith:

There's a, there's a bunch of people that are, are feeding into the false masculinity and there's a, I think it's in, in a way it's, it's two things.

Aaron Smith:

It's feeding into our natural flesh.

Aaron Smith:

There's this strong desire in us to be men, to be masculine.

Aaron Smith:

But then there's a, on this, on the second thing, there's a desire to have no responsibility and to only care for ourselves.

Aaron Smith:

That's the, the sinful flesh.

Aaron Smith:

Like you said, you can run faster, like I can, I can spend all the time getting exercise in and eating well and, and starting my career and building wealth and investing.

Aaron Smith:

And it's so much easier to do all of those things over here.

Aaron Smith:

But it also, I think it's also the reason it's so attractive is not just because our, our sinful flesh wants that.

Aaron Smith:

The no responsibility, the good looks, the, the, the rock hard abs, the, you know, the homes and the cars and all that lifestyle, but it's, it's also, in a way, it's a, it's a retaliation to the current culture over the last, you know, however many decades of the emasculating sense that men get from culture.

Aaron Smith:

And so I think there's a lot of men that are gravitating toward that because it's a way of fighting back against how they've been made to feel like not a man.

Will Spencer:

So the fighting back part is.

Will Spencer:

Is really interesting because I think a lot of people really lean into that argument when talking about him.

Will Spencer:

It's like, oh, this is.

Will Spencer:

You know, I like Andrew Tate because he's pushing back on.

Will Spencer:

What do you.

Will Spencer:

The longhouse, the gynocracy, the gynocratic social order.

Will Spencer:

There are dozens of.

Will Spencer:

Feminism.

Will Spencer:

Exactly.

Will Spencer:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

There are dozens of different labels for all of this.

Will Spencer:

And like, okay, like, I get it.

Will Spencer:

You know, I, I came up and into and through the manosphere as well.

Will Spencer:

I get the outrage, and I've studied it and I, And I understand it.

Will Spencer:

But, you know, at a certain point, even.

Will Spencer:

Even anger becomes boyish irresponsibility.

Will Spencer:

Like, it's so much easier to get super angry on the Internet at whoever it is this week.

Will Spencer:

You know, this week it's whatever, it's feminism.

Will Spencer:

And last week it was, you know, the H1B thing over the immigrants and the week before that, the week before that.

Will Spencer:

It's so much easier even to do that than it is to say, you know what?

Will Spencer:

I'm going to delete these apps off my phone and I'm going to lean into scripture and into prayer and go to church.

Will Spencer:

And I don't care whether you think your.

Will Spencer:

Your pastor is masculine enough.

Will Spencer:

It doesn't matter.

Will Spencer:

The Bible doesn't come with an asterisk on the COVID of it that says, only read this and only go to church if you know your.

Will Spencer:

Your pastor can deadlift enough.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

And so, like, this boyish irresponsibility that men just get sucked into, I think is rather than slow, gradual change, it's dramatic escape.

Will Spencer:

I'd rather get outraged about this today and fight back against whatever it is.

Will Spencer:

Like, feminists talk about the patriarchy, you know, and, and the, The.

Will Spencer:

The manosphere guys or whatever, talk about feminism.

Will Spencer:

Like, well, what about you, bro?

Will Spencer:

Like, what are you actually doing to live into who and what God has called you to be?

Will Spencer:

Like, right now, you are a combination of your.

Will Spencer:

Both your choices and your circumstances.

Will Spencer:

You have limited control over your circumstances.

Will Spencer:

Like, we don't get to choose what era we're born in.

Will Spencer:

We don't get to choose, you know, a lot of other dynamics, right?

Will Spencer:

But you still get to make choices in relation to those circumstances that move you closer to who God has called you to be, take you backwards or get you nowhere.

Will Spencer:

And that's the part.

Will Spencer:

That's the part, like, I get the anger, but, like, you still have to act well.

Aaron Smith:

And like I said when I was Saying how I almost didn't have any answers, stepping into trying to become a husband, figuring out dating and what that looked like.

Aaron Smith:

I don't think many people have answers on what it means to be a man.

Aaron Smith:

And so we're naturally going to gravitate as a human being, as a creature that God made, towards something that's going to feel like that answer.

Aaron Smith:

And as John 1, I mean, not John 1, I think it's Romans 1 and 2 talks about that we trade worship for the creation.

Aaron Smith:

We worship the creation rather than the Creator.

Aaron Smith:

And so we're going to constantly look for in creation that thing that we feel like is going to fulfill that answer rather than the Creator himself, who's going to guide us to the correct answer.

Aaron Smith:

And so that often leads us to define things like success or manhood or, you know, whatever you name it, with our own definition.

Aaron Smith:

And so Andrew Tate, you know, he.

Aaron Smith:

There's a bunch of stuff that he said before that I'm like, oh, that's, you know, that lines with my conservative views, and there's a lot of stuff that doesn't align with my Christian views.

Aaron Smith:

But at the end of the day, you know, how are we defining success?

Aaron Smith:

Are we defining it the way the world wants to define it, or are we defining the way Christ wants to define it?

Aaron Smith:

And so I, I, it's.

Aaron Smith:

It's a hard thing.

Aaron Smith:

I.

Aaron Smith:

My whole life I've struggled with this idea of, like, what's my identity?

Aaron Smith:

What, you know, am I a man?

Aaron Smith:

And the, the more I get older and the more I have children, and the more I, you know, go through hard things with my wife.

Aaron Smith:

And at the end of the day, I'm.

Aaron Smith:

I have this conversation talking about how this is the hardest thing we'll ever do.

Aaron Smith:

I just think, you know, I'm doing something hard.

Aaron Smith:

I'm doing something that is so worth it and worthy and, like, seeing my kids become individuals and have their own thoughts and have their own ideas, and my son pulling out scripture out of nowhere to tell me, and then them coming to us when me and my wife are having a conflict and saying, hey, have you prayed about it?

Aaron Smith:

Let's pray, and encouraging us to do the right thing in the spirit.

Aaron Smith:

I'm like, man, that's amazing.

Aaron Smith:

And so I would want that for anyone.

Aaron Smith:

And it doesn't mean they're going to be perfect at it.

Aaron Smith:

Doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

Aaron Smith:

No.

Aaron Smith:

In fact, it's going to be the hardest thing they ever do.

Aaron Smith:

It's going to be the most rewarding thing they ever do if they continue to follow Christ in it all, Take that next right step, because no one told me what steps to take.

Aaron Smith:

No one showed me the right path.

Aaron Smith:

Almost all of us have probably terrible examples from our own parents because they're also sinners and they also weren't shown the way.

Aaron Smith:

And so we're constantly trying to find out what is success, what is manhood.

Aaron Smith:

And it all comes down to is, what if our identity is found in Christ, then we're going to go to Christ for those answers.

Aaron Smith:

If our identity is found in ourselves or in the world, then we're going.

Aaron Smith:

Going to scour the Internet for him.

Aaron Smith:

You were talking about Andrew Tate on Twitter, and there's another.

Aaron Smith:

There's an account.

Aaron Smith:

I don't follow Andrew Tate, but there's an account I do follow called.

Aaron Smith:

I think it's Gigabased dad or something like that, or Gigabased Husband.

Will Spencer:

I think I may have seen that one.

Aaron Smith:

I love it.

Aaron Smith:

He posts the funniest things, but he posts like, this is real success.

Aaron Smith:

And it shows a woman who's actually a friend of ours who has.

Aaron Smith:

I think she's got like nine kids with one on the way or something like that.

Aaron Smith:

And I'm like, yeah, like, that is because.

Aaron Smith:

, you want to be a radical in:

Aaron Smith:

It's like, you know, get married, have kids and go to church.

Aaron Smith:

It's like, yeah, like, that is radical.

Aaron Smith:

It's radical to, you know, we go places and people see how many kids we have, but then they.

Aaron Smith:

It's more than that.

Aaron Smith:

They see that they're well behaved and they come.

Aaron Smith:

They're like, your kids are so behaved.

Aaron Smith:

I'm like, well, it takes a lot of energy at home to figure that out.

Aaron Smith:

It doesn't just happen.

Aaron Smith:

It's not like they're just perfect kids.

Aaron Smith:

They're not.

Aaron Smith:

They're kids.

Aaron Smith:

They have issues and struggles and we have lots of conversations, lots of Bible time, lots of sitting down, lots of con, you know, all of those things to get there.

Aaron Smith:

But the world looks at it and is like, that's crazy.

Aaron Smith:

You know, you just, you know, you just threw your life.

Aaron Smith:

I'm like, no, this is my life.

Aaron Smith:

This is what I want.

Aaron Smith:

Didn't always want it, but I've learned that it's the best thing ever.

Aaron Smith:

And even all my decisions, like, with business and it's not around making more money, it's like, what can I build that I can leave to my kids if they want it?

Aaron Smith:

It's all coming down to legacy and handing down.

Aaron Smith:

I think it's Proverbs that says a wise man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

Aaron Smith:

Not just his children, but his children's children.

Aaron Smith:

Like, I'm, you know, my inheritance I want to leave, most importantly is an inheritance of.

Aaron Smith:

Of salvation.

Aaron Smith:

The gospel.

Aaron Smith:

I want to.

Aaron Smith:

I want to point them to Jesus.

Aaron Smith:

That.

Aaron Smith:

So I want that to keep going from generation to generation.

Aaron Smith:

But I also am trying to, you know, best I can figure out how to have something to hand to them if, if they want it.

Aaron Smith:

They may not want it, but it'd be cool to have it to give to them if they wanted it.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, I mean, I, I appreciate what you said about leading your family to Christ, because I think that might actually be the hardest thing on earth, in a sense.

Will Spencer:

Well, because the way is that the gate is narrow, right?

Will Spencer:

Like, go through the narrow gate.

Will Spencer:

It, It's.

Will Spencer:

It is a very narrow gate.

Will Spencer:

In fact, sometimes, like if you read Pilgrim's Progress by John.

Will Spencer:

John Bunyan, that many times, classic stories as.

Will Spencer:

What's that?

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, we.

Aaron Smith:

We've as a family, gone there a bunch of times.

Will Spencer:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

So, you know, like, that story is exact.

Will Spencer:

Is about exactly how narrow the gate is.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

Over the course of the lifetime of a believer.

Will Spencer:

And so, you know, I've done hard things.

Will Spencer:

I've climbed mountains and sailed oceans and, you know, I've.

Will Spencer:

I've done that stuff, like physically hard, literally dangerous, like life at risk stuff.

Will Spencer:

And I don't mean to underplay that.

Will Spencer:

And there are men that do that for a living.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

With bullets are flying at them, targeted at them.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

And I don't mean to underplay all that.

Will Spencer:

And there is something to be said for being a man who can lead other souls to heaven right through the narrow gate over the course of 18 or more years, actually, really their entire life or your entire life as it, as it pertains to them, like, how long are you alive?

Will Spencer:

And getting yourself there as well.

Will Spencer:

That is the kind of task that requires daily discipline, daily focus.

Will Spencer:

And you can do it from when you can do it from the beginning until the very end.

Will Spencer:

It's not something that is going to naturally go down over time.

Will Spencer:

It's something that increases over time or God willing, should.

Will Spencer:

And like, not to underplay the significance of the weight of that responsibility that, in a sense, never ends.

Will Spencer:

Like, you can launch your kids off, you know, in a good direction.

Will Spencer:

They can, you know, whatever, go to college or they can get married and set off on that road.

Will Spencer:

But again, if you, as a husband and father and leader should fall off at some point later after they're gone.

Will Spencer:

You know, that can in some sense can compromise their own example.

Will Spencer:

And there are lots of stories about that.

Will Spencer:

And so I think we, I think as, as Christians, we haven't added, like, the secular world doesn't know how to think in those terms.

Will Spencer:

It doesn't know God.

Will Spencer:

It doesn't see heaven.

Will Spencer:

It's not something that it's oriented towards.

Will Spencer:

But as Christians, we're obligated to think in those terms.

Will Spencer:

As fathers, we're obligated to think in those terms.

Will Spencer:

And that's what makes me a little disappointed.

Will Spencer:

By the way, so many Christians are so excited.

Will Spencer:

Christian men are so excited to follow Godless.

Will Spencer:

You know, in many ways, Antichrist leaders like, well, what does a man look like?

Will Spencer:

He looks like that.

Will Spencer:

No, he doesn't look like that at all.

Will Spencer:

Right.

Will Spencer:

That's what a male looks like.

Will Spencer:

But does.

Will Spencer:

Is he going to lead anyone to anywhere other than off the cliff?

Will Spencer:

No.

Will Spencer:

So why are you following him?

Will Spencer:

And that's the part that I find, you know, sad.

Aaron Smith:

We talk about this in our book, Marriage After God, the which, which I.

Will Spencer:

Have right here, Marriage After God, available now on Amazon.

Aaron Smith:

It is, yeah.

Aaron Smith:

And thank you for that.

Aaron Smith:

We talk, we talk about just the, you know, the stepping stone of growing into manhood and, you know, marriage being a huge part of that.

Aaron Smith:

Again, that doesn't mean single men who are in ministry aren't men, but it's a natural and ordinary, normal way that God brings men into maturity is through marriage.

Aaron Smith:

But it also becomes a starting place.

Aaron Smith:

If you look in Timothy and Titus, Paul's instruction on how to choose elders and deacons in the church starts with men who are of one wife.

Aaron Smith:

The wife is loved and is also respected, has children.

Aaron Smith:

So those.

Aaron Smith:

And then he says, he's like, because how can a man want to manage the household of God if he cannot manage his own home?

Aaron Smith:

So our homes, like you were just talking about being able to lead my children, if I can't lead my children to know the Lord, what business do I have going away from my house and going and doing that with full grown adults who have a lifetime of brokenness, a lifetime of lies, a lifetime of things that you have to work through.

Aaron Smith:

When I can't sit down with my child who's having an emotional breakdown and help him to understand what the scripture says and what God says and what God says of him and who he is, and how can I go and tell another man how to respect someone and love someone and to treat someone as their own body.

Aaron Smith:

If I'm not doing that to my wife, if I'm not loving her as Christ loved the church, giving himself of her, washing her by the water with the word that she may be presented to him spotless and blameless.

Aaron Smith:

And it's not talking about me presenting my wife to him.

Aaron Smith:

It's about Christ presenting the church to God spotless and blameless.

Aaron Smith:

But if I'm not doing that in my house with my wife, if I can't walk with her in forgiveness and understanding, if I can't learn patience and even most of the time, repentance.

Aaron Smith:

I messed up.

Aaron Smith:

I'm so sorry.

Aaron Smith:

I need to change in this area.

Aaron Smith:

I'm going to change.

Aaron Smith:

If I can't do that in my home, what business do I have going and doing that in church?

Aaron Smith:

There's a quote I have in the book that says, don't sacrifice your marriage on the altar of ministry.

Aaron Smith:

Don't sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry.

Aaron Smith:

This quote, unquote ministry.

Aaron Smith:

I'm doing the Lord's work over here, but I refuse to do the Lord's work in my home.

Aaron Smith:

And that's backwards.

Aaron Smith:

That's absolutely backwards.

Aaron Smith:

Because I have six children who are to be disciples in my own home.

Aaron Smith:

If I cannot disciple them, what business do I have leaving my house and going discipling other men at all?

Aaron Smith:

I have no business.

Aaron Smith:

I'm sacrificing my children for the sake of someone else's life.

Aaron Smith:

Now, God loves that person.

Aaron Smith:

And that's me saying, God, I don't think you're capable of bringing someone else into that man's life to disciple him.

Aaron Smith:

I need to do it.

Aaron Smith:

I don't trust you to do it.

Aaron Smith:

So I need to leave my family and let them flounder over here.

Aaron Smith:

Now, the point is we should be able to do both.

Aaron Smith:

I should be in my house, I should be practicing those things here daily.

Aaron Smith:

And then I have that energy and that overflow that is going to go into other people's lives.

Aaron Smith:

So it shouldn't be an and, or it should be an and.

Aaron Smith:

Like, I do this here so that I can do it there.

Aaron Smith:

I have an example here so that my example holds up there.

Aaron Smith:

I'm practicing what I preach here so that when I go preach it there, I'm like, hey, you know, I just had this conversation with my son, and they're like, oh, wow, you know, we can't separate our ministry from our families.

Aaron Smith:

Our families are our.

Aaron Smith:

They're our closest and nearest neighbors.

Aaron Smith:

And so if we're to love our neighbors as ourselves, if we're to minister to our closest neighbor, and like the Good Samaritan story, Jesus asks, who's the neighbor?

Aaron Smith:

And they're like, well, I guess the one that helped.

Aaron Smith:

Like, there you go.

Aaron Smith:

So our responsibility is definitely by proximity.

Aaron Smith:

So our most responsible energy, or what we're most responsible for, is what's closest to us.

Aaron Smith:

It's our wife, our children, our church, our neighbors.

Aaron Smith:

And then it trickles out from there, always.

Aaron Smith:

It doesn't start out in Africa and then come back this way.

Aaron Smith:

It starts the other way.

Will Spencer:

Right, right.

Will Spencer:

Well, do you want to spend a moment talking about your book Marriage After God, which you wrote with your wife, and sort of what the book is about and the inspiration behind it?

Will Spencer:

And you want to talk about this for just a moment?

Will Spencer:

Because I have wanted men and women to know about this book because it's.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, please jump in.

Aaron Smith:

Well, it came out of.

Aaron Smith:

My wife and I, years ago, did a marriage retreat.

Aaron Smith:

We called it Marriage After God.

Aaron Smith:

And we had 12 couples come.

Aaron Smith:

It was super difficult.

Aaron Smith:

We'd never done a retreat before.

Aaron Smith:

We haven't done one since.

Will Spencer:

12 couples.

Aaron Smith:

A lot of people.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah.

Aaron Smith:

But it was awesome.

Aaron Smith:

And that the curriculum that we came up for that kind of turned into this book.

Aaron Smith:

And so even though it's not something that we continued to do, we're like, you know, people love this.

Aaron Smith:

This was awesome.

Aaron Smith:

Let's turn into a book.

Aaron Smith:

And so that's where Marriage After God came from.

Aaron Smith:

And essentially, the.

Aaron Smith:

The premise of the entire book is what we were just talking about, that your marriage is your first ministry.

Aaron Smith:

And not seeing it.

Aaron Smith:

Seeing ministry as something that happens elsewhere, or not seeing ministry as something that has, like, got this specific category of, like, well, worship leader, executive pastor, you know, you name the handful of ministries that many people think are the only ministries.

Aaron Smith:

And so, because there's this.

Aaron Smith:

This fallacy that we have as believers is like, well, I'm not that.

Aaron Smith:

So therefore, I'm not in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

And actually, this is a.

Aaron Smith:

It's a detriment that many people in quote, unquote ministry say is like, oh, if God calls you to ministry, then you're like.

Aaron Smith:

When you say that, what you're saying is, I'm not in ministry if I'm not doing what you're doing.

Aaron Smith:

And we wanted to break that mold and say, you know, the Bible actually teaches that every single person, even who you would think is the weaker link, the weaker person in the church, it says they're indispensable that's right.

Aaron Smith:

So no minister, no person who's in, quote unquote, full time ministry should tell anyone that they're not in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

If they believe in Jesus Christ, if they are a born again Christian, they are ministers of the Gospel.

Aaron Smith:

The Bible calls us priests, all of us, not just this guy on the stage, not just this person, you know, behind the, you know, the computer screen over here.

Aaron Smith:

We're in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

We, we are ministers of the gospel, each one of us.

Aaron Smith:

And it's been a, it's been a, a, a very bad thing, I think, in general, across the board.

Aaron Smith:

And it pro.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know when it started, maybe back when Constantine instituted the national church, maybe.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know if, but we're trying to break that and say, you know, you are in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

If you, if all you ever did was minister to your home and your, your wife and your children, that's that you're going to be told, well done, good and faithful servant.

Aaron Smith:

You're going to stand before the Lord and be like, I gave you this woman and I gave you these children and you were faithful with them.

Aaron Smith:

But what happens is when you start thinking that way, when you start seeing your life and saying, oh, I'm a believer, I'm in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

And oh, I have this wife.

Aaron Smith:

I'm, she's someone I minister to.

Aaron Smith:

Oh, I have these children, I minister to them.

Aaron Smith:

Oh, I have a neighbor, I minister to them.

Aaron Smith:

And so we talk about, in the book, we talk about one of our favorite things in the book is the tool belt.

Aaron Smith:

And the tool belt is every Christian has it and it's what God gives each one of us.

Aaron Smith:

It's our unique tools that he's equipped each one of us with by the power of His Holy Spirit and His guiding in our life and all the experiences that we've gone through to be used for his glory.

Aaron Smith:

And so we.

Aaron Smith:

In the toolbox, there's experiences like, will you have experiences that I don't have.

Aaron Smith:

You mentioned sailing.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know if you actually sailed or if you were in military or whatever, but I've been on a boat.

Aaron Smith:

I've never gone across the ocean.

Aaron Smith:

Our testimony, every single person has their own testimony of how God took them from the muck and the mire and put them on solid ground.

Aaron Smith:

How Christ met them and did a work in their life and they received Jesus.

Aaron Smith:

The other thing is our gifts and our talents, each one of us.

Aaron Smith:

I can podcast and we write books.

Aaron Smith:

That's a gift and a talent, but that's not everyone's gift and talent.

Aaron Smith:

I'm not the only person that's ministering to the world through my books.

Aaron Smith:

My books have not reached even a percent of the world.

Aaron Smith:

But there are people that have other gifts.

Aaron Smith:

We talk in the book.

Aaron Smith:

There are people that are really good at baking.

Aaron Smith:

And I'm not saying that's the only gift that someone might have, but some people have a really excellent gift of baking.

Aaron Smith:

They may not even have a business with it, but we had friends that dropped off, you know, they would always.

Aaron Smith:

They would drop off a pastry and a letter and remind us that they're praying for us.

Aaron Smith:

Some people are really good, you know, with hospitality and hosting and cooking and bringing in their neighbors and sitting down and having a delicious meal and using that as an opportunity to tell them about Jesus.

Aaron Smith:

And then the last one in the tool belt is resources.

Aaron Smith:

We all have different level of resources that God's entrusted to us.

Aaron Smith:

And so we tell believers.

Aaron Smith:

The story of this book is, you're in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

Here's what God gave you to minister with.

Aaron Smith:

And you don't need to see yourself as inadequate.

Aaron Smith:

Stop seeing yourself as like, well, I'm not them, so therefore I'm not in ministry.

Aaron Smith:

No, you are.

Aaron Smith:

Break that.

Aaron Smith:

Take the glasses off.

Aaron Smith:

Take the blindfold off.

Aaron Smith:

You are if you believe in Jesus, if you're a born again Christian, you're a part of his building, you're a part of his work.

Aaron Smith:

You are what he's doing in the world, and your family is what he's doing in the world.

Aaron Smith:

And he wants to work in us and through us.

Aaron Smith:

And so.

Aaron Smith:

And we use the marriage as a catalyst to talk about this concept.

Aaron Smith:

And so it starts with your spouse and then your children, and then trickles its way out into the world.

Aaron Smith:

And it's how God has always intended it from.

Aaron Smith:

From day one.

Aaron Smith:

Well, I should say day six, right?

Will Spencer:

I mean, that's that it sort of brings the depth of responsibility into.

Will Spencer:

Into sharp focus.

Will Spencer:

Like, you're no longer just a.

Will Spencer:

You're no longer just a man.

Will Spencer:

You have.

Will Spencer:

You have a ministry.

Will Spencer:

I remember the first time my friends who baptized me, you know, they.

Will Spencer:

They were asking me about my podcast, and they referred to it as a ministry.

Will Spencer:

I'm like, I haven't opened ministry yet.

Will Spencer:

I'm not in ministry.

Will Spencer:

I said that like, well, no, that's.

Will Spencer:

That's just, you know, sort of that's what you're doing for the world.

Will Spencer:

That's how you're.

Will Spencer:

How you're bringing the gospel, you know, to the world.

Will Spencer:

That's how you're ministering to people.

Will Spencer:

It's not that you're a priest or you're a pastor or anything like that.

Will Spencer:

It's.

Will Spencer:

That's just the term for that.

Will Spencer:

And it was like, that's very.

Will Spencer:

That was a very interesting little nugget they gave me because it helped me think about what I do in an.

Will Spencer:

In a new way.

Will Spencer:

And I think for believers to think about all of their responsibilities in the world and.

Will Spencer:

Which includes at home and out in the world as ministry in maybe not in a formal sense, but in the sense like, this is your opportunity to bring the gospel out, you know, and to embody it in a fallen world and inside the walls of your home and outside at work and the other.

Will Spencer:

Other spheres that you move through.

Will Spencer:

I think it creates a greater sense of responsibility to behave and to think and to move in a godly manner when you.

Will Spencer:

When you think of it that way.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, and.

Aaron Smith:

And it's true.

Aaron Smith:

It's.

Aaron Smith:

If you think of.

Aaron Smith:

We were just talking to the kids this morning about that.

Aaron Smith:

We were talking about the word dispersion.

Aaron Smith:

And there's, you know, God dispersed the people at the Tower of Babel because he wanted them to spread around the world and he confuse their languages.

Aaron Smith:

But there was a dispersion that happened in the New Testament after the resurrection of Christ when the persecution was just increasing, increasing in the church and with the Jews, that Christians were being spread out.

Aaron Smith:

They had to flee.

Aaron Smith:

They were being pushed away.

Aaron Smith:

They were being killed.

Aaron Smith:

And so there was all these Christians fleeing away from Israel and from Roman occupation.

Aaron Smith:

And that was how God spread the word.

Aaron Smith:

He put his word in them and then spread them out.

Aaron Smith:

And so these Christians over in Asia, where these people in Asia had never even heard of Jesus.

Aaron Smith:

This thing was taking place, you know, thousands of miles away.

Aaron Smith:

And they're just living their lives, doing what they do.

Aaron Smith:

And all of a sudden this refugee family shows up and they're like, oh, we had to flee because we believe in this man that died and rose again from the dead.

Aaron Smith:

And they're like, what?

Aaron Smith:

And then you have this.

Will Spencer:

You have this family, put it that way.

Aaron Smith:

Then you have this another family that got sent to, you know, Italy and then another.

Aaron Smith:

And you have all these people now filled with the Holy Spirit and a little bit of the knowledge of God, because the Bible wasn't even, you know, in the hands of people for 100 years or so after Jesus was ascended into heaven.

Aaron Smith:

And so you see these.

Aaron Smith:

This was God's plan from the beginning, that his word would be spread not by professionals, not by people.

Aaron Smith:

Professional, quote, unquote, ministry, which there are those people.

Aaron Smith:

I'm not putting that down.

Aaron Smith:

Like, there's like, the Bible talks about this, you know, supporting your.

Aaron Smith:

Those who teach you and sharing all good things with them.

Aaron Smith:

And some.

Aaron Smith:

And those that teach are deserving of a double portion.

Aaron Smith:

And those are good things.

Aaron Smith:

But that wasn't God's intention for the spreading of the gospel, the spreading of the gospel.

Aaron Smith:

His intention was the church at large.

Aaron Smith:

You, me, anyone who names the name of Jesus and us being in our place.

Aaron Smith:

So will you have an influence in your location, where you're at, not just online, but in your own, wherever you live?

Aaron Smith:

You have an influence that I will never be able to have because I'm not there.

Aaron Smith:

I have no proximity to Will and who Will has proximity to.

Aaron Smith:

And so God has his church where you're at.

Aaron Smith:

God has his church where I'm at, and that's his plan.

Aaron Smith:

And you know, what, if, again, I go back to this, but if people recognize that their children are part of the church and their disciples, and that's how we're raising them, the church is growing.

Aaron Smith:

My intention is like to raise up six children who know the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

Like, okay, there's six people in the body of Christ.

Aaron Smith:

And so you have not just multiplication, but fruitfulness in that multiplication.

Aaron Smith:

So that happens in our homes with the way we see our families and the growth of them.

Aaron Smith:

And then it happens in our lives when we recognize, like my career or my job or my neighbors.

Aaron Smith:

These are not just people here for me to avoid or have a good conversation with, but they're hopefully people that will enter into the kingdom of heaven through my influence in their life.

Aaron Smith:

You know, I may just be a planter or I may just be a waterer, but my prayer is that the Lord brings an increase in anyone's lives around me.

Will Spencer:

I love that.

Will Spencer:

That way of thinking that we're called to care for, we're called to steward or to shepherd.

Will Spencer:

More than what might be obvious, that there are opportunities for us to guide and to lead that again, men are called to step into.

Will Spencer:

You're called to step into that role.

Will Spencer:

You might not be called into the role of a deacon at your church or an elder.

Will Spencer:

You know, that.

Will Spencer:

That might not be.

Will Spencer:

That might not be you, but certainly there are.

Will Spencer:

There are ways in which you can step into that role every day if you choose to approach it that way.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, you choose to approach whatever.

Will Spencer:

Whatever you do.

Will Spencer:

Whether it could be your bowling league, you know, maybe.

Will Spencer:

Maybe you're very Passionate about that.

Will Spencer:

And you have some leadership role at your bowling league that is the opportunity to faithfully steward and shepherd people.

Will Spencer:

Now it doesn't mean you're going to get up at the next tournament and you're going to give a sermon, you know, but it's the opport, it's the opportunity to plant seeds.

Will Spencer:

It's the opportunity to embody and witness as the gospel.

Will Spencer:

And you bring that home with you as well.

Will Spencer:

And it, it never turns off.

Will Spencer:

There's never a moment, there's never a moment where, in a, in a man's life or in a woman's life for that matter, where it's like, okay, like we're in a free for all sin period for the next hour.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, you know, God's gonna look the other way.

Will Spencer:

It doesn't work that way.

Aaron Smith:

Well, and I, I think there's a kind of going back to this idea of manhood and like this boyishness of not wanting to step into any responsibility, this fear of like, well, I don't want to be responsible for that, you know, so if I'm not, I'm not the pastor.

Aaron Smith:

I don't need to be responsible for anyone's salvation or anyone's knowledge of God.

Aaron Smith:

I'm just me.

Aaron Smith:

I go to work and I come home and then I come.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, I love to receive and I love to hear, you know, the message and I feel good.

Aaron Smith:

I'm just going to practice being a good person.

Aaron Smith:

But there's a responsibility.

Aaron Smith:

I want to encourage all your listeners to go read first and second Timothy and Titus and look at the qualifications for an elder.

Aaron Smith:

Like again, not everyone's going to be an elder.

Aaron Smith:

Not everyone's going to be a deacon.

Aaron Smith:

Not everyone's going to have those official roles in the church.

Aaron Smith:

Official, okay, but go read the qualifications and tell me which ones are not good to be walking in.

Aaron Smith:

Whether you're an elder or not.

Aaron Smith:

Tell me which ones.

Aaron Smith:

You're like, oh, I can be a drunkard because I'm not an elder.

Aaron Smith:

Oh, I can be, I can, you know, be given to ill gotten gains and trying to be a pursuer of wealth because I'm not an elder.

Aaron Smith:

Oh, I can have children that, you know, don't need to know.

Aaron Smith:

My children don't need to know the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

I don't need to disciple them.

Aaron Smith:

Well, because I'm not an elder.

Aaron Smith:

You know, you look at all the, all the qualifications of an elder and there are things that men should be walking in regardless of their position in any church anywhere.

Aaron Smith:

And so I tend to point people down, be like, well, you may not be in any official role in any church, but you are officially a minister in the body of Christ.

Aaron Smith:

And so you better be thinking about that good and hard about how you're walking.

Aaron Smith:

The Bible is very clear about that.

Will Spencer:

So I can hear out there in the Internet, all the guys listening, saying like, okay, well you know, you and Aaron have banged on men.

Will Spencer:

You've talked about responsibility and you've talked about, you know, growing up and you've taken shots at my heroes and you know, accountability, all that.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, okay, fine, hear it.

Will Spencer:

And they're probably saying, well, okay, so what about the women?

Will Spencer:

I look around, this is them speaking.

Will Spencer:

I look around and I see feminism and I see girls putting off marriage and they're into online dating and then men are disposable and you know, they don't follow the Bible and they're leaving churches.

Will Spencer:

And I want to acknowledge all of that topic set which I think articulates very real concerns that men have.

Will Spencer:

And I want to start talking about the female side of this equation because it is true that a man's income, I think this is, I think you mentioned earlier, that's been statistically proven that a man will earn more than with a wife to care for at home, to take care of and manage the home front.

Will Spencer:

Then two, then two working couples will earn together, right?

Will Spencer:

And I've, I've seen this in various families that I've met, you know, I met the strangest thing.

Will Spencer:

I, you know, a multi, multi million dollar millionaire father, very giant mansion, etc.

Will Spencer:

Private plane.

Will Spencer:

Like the guy, the guy was set, his wife had stayed home to raise their, their, their three kids and the wife had made this sacrifice.

Will Spencer:

The husband had, you know, gone from a low level salesman to the CEO of a company which he founded and the wife was raising the daughters to be feminists and have their own careers.

Will Spencer:

And it was like, yeah, exactly.

Will Spencer:

So, so this is a real thing.

Will Spencer:

And so I want to speak into a little bit, a little bit about this as well, because particularly your books, they're not written by Aaron Smith, they're written by Aaron and Jennifer Smith.

Will Spencer:

So clearly you found, you found a wife, six kids you've mentioned who's on board with this or you've created this together.

Will Spencer:

So I want to talk a little bit about the, the, the female side of the equation as well and, and hopefully speak some reality and also some hope into men and give some guidance to the women who are listening also.

Aaron Smith:

I'll say this, that wherever there are Women.

Aaron Smith:

And wherever there are Christian women, there's going to be marriage material.

Aaron Smith:

I'm just going to say that.

Aaron Smith:

And I think we need to change our expectations, because I think we set ourselves up with wrong expectations that are going to shift and change after marriage.

Aaron Smith:

And so that's one thing.

Aaron Smith:

But on the women's side, someone once told me, read your own mail.

Aaron Smith:

And so the point is, we like to, as husbands, look at Proverbs 20.

Aaron Smith:

Proverbs, not Proverbs, Ephesians 5:22.

Aaron Smith:

And we like to go say, wives, look what Ephesians 5:22 says, says, Submit to your husbands and everything.

Aaron Smith:

That's not my mail.

Aaron Smith:

God wrote that to wives.

Aaron Smith:

Wives are to read that.

Aaron Smith:

Wives are to look at that, and they're to submit themselves to the Lord in that as they obey it.

Aaron Smith:

That's their mail.

Aaron Smith:

It's not my job to go tell my wife what their mail says and read it for her.

Aaron Smith:

I need to read my mail.

Aaron Smith:

Husbands likewise, love your wives, as Christ loved the church.

Aaron Smith:

That's my mail.

Aaron Smith:

And so I just wanted to start with saying I don't have much of a.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know what the terminology is, but my intention is not to try and convince any woman what kind of woman she needs to be.

Aaron Smith:

She's to seek the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

The Bible is very clear about what a godly woman looks like.

Aaron Smith:

And so she gets to go in the word of God and she gets to submit herself before the Lord, as I would tell any man to do, and say, lord, am I becoming and operating like the woman you want me to be?

Aaron Smith:

That's what she gets to do.

Aaron Smith:

And the word is not unclear at all.

Aaron Smith:

And I also say this, that there is, out of all of the Bible, gosh, what 20 verses geared towards women and how they should behave.

Aaron Smith:

And then the rest of the Bible is men how should behave.

Aaron Smith:

Right.

Will Spencer:

Amen.

Aaron Smith:

So, yeah, there's that.

Aaron Smith:

A lot of what we're seeing in the world is because of men being boys.

Aaron Smith:

And I'm blaming everything on men.

Aaron Smith:

I'm just saying men not leading well, husbands not loving their wives well.

Aaron Smith:

And then women, these wives, becoming angry and bitter and saying, I want something different for my daughter, to protect her from this kind of man.

Aaron Smith:

And so then they.

Aaron Smith:

They lead their daughters in that way.

Aaron Smith:

And so my.

Aaron Smith:

I would have an encouragement for any of the older women, older wives that are.

Aaron Smith:

That listen to this podcast to recognize that they have a major role.

Aaron Smith:

Titus talks about this and these older women leading younger women to be godly women and to love their Husbands and to.

Aaron Smith:

To teach.

Aaron Smith:

Well, it says.

Aaron Smith:

And so we need older men to do the same thing.

Aaron Smith:

We need elder men and elder women to recognize that they're not irrelevant as the culture has made them feel, that they're more relevant than ever.

Aaron Smith:

Because we need the wisdom and we need the history and we need the tenure and we need the dedication and the faithfulness of these older men and women who love God, have walked out their faith over the history of their marriages to find these young women and say, what are you doing?

Aaron Smith:

This is right.

Aaron Smith:

This is what's right.

Aaron Smith:

Here's what you should look for.

Aaron Smith:

Here's how you should behave and encourage them in what's right.

Aaron Smith:

And so I think we're missing a lot of that in our culture.

Aaron Smith:

I don't think for a fact we're missing a lot of that.

Aaron Smith:

We're all raised.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know how old you are, but I just turned 40 last April, and I just grow up.

Aaron Smith:

And I had a few men in my life that spoke in my life and mentored me.

Aaron Smith:

But I'm just looking back and I'm like, where are all the older men?

Aaron Smith:

They all got older and they're like, I want to retire and I don't want to focus on anything.

Aaron Smith:

Instead of seeing themselves like, I have a ministry to all these younger men.

Aaron Smith:

And then we were also told that old is old news and we need to.

Aaron Smith:

We want youth pastors that are our age and our peers.

Aaron Smith:

We want leaders that are just like us.

Aaron Smith:

Rather than looking to the older generations, looking to the people that have walked out faithfully for decades, generations, we've substituted elders for peers.

Aaron Smith:

And I just think that's been a detriment to our society in a big way.

Will Spencer:

Thank you for saying that.

Will Spencer:

Oh, my goodness.

Will Spencer:

That has been something that I've observed since long before I came into the Christian world.

Will Spencer:

Just in the world of men's work, you know, men's retreat, stuff like that.

Will Spencer:

One of the things about going into those environments, again, this is long before I was a Christian.

Will Spencer:

One of the things about going into those environments is that there were men who were elders, meaning these were older men, you know, 50, 60 plus, who carried themselves with a sense of gravitas that you felt, this is an older man, right, who has lived, who has achieved, and who has wisdom to pass on and isn't going to tolerate me being a boy or me being irresponsible or anyone like that.

Will Spencer:

And the weight and the gravity that lent to the proceedings was like, this has been missing.

Will Spencer:

Where are the Older men.

Will Spencer:

And when I say older, I mean 65.

Will Spencer:

60.

Will Spencer:

65 plus.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, right.

Will Spencer:

Genuinely, legitimately.

Will Spencer:

They've lived, they've internalized, they've digested and they've metabolized life and they've made something out of it, and they're going to show up and they're going to take control of the situation.

Will Spencer:

One of the, One of the stories that I always tell or sort of one of the observations I always make about men is that, you know, young men get so fired up and think that they're super powerful and they're the most powerful thing in the universe.

Will Spencer:

And I'm like, okay, let me show you the limits of that.

Will Spencer:

So imagine that you have a line.

Will Spencer:

Listeners have probably heard me say this before.

Will Spencer:

So imagine you have a line of, like, Braveheart warriors, like on the side, one side of the field, their faces are painted and they're howling.

Will Spencer:

You know what I mean?

Will Spencer:

They got their.

Will Spencer:

They've got their swords and they're ready to do a charge across the battlefield.

Will Spencer:

Okay?

Will Spencer:

They're all fired up, right?

Will Spencer:

You have to.

Will Spencer:

There are two things, two things to think about.

Will Spencer:

One, if you were to take a beautiful woman, shoeless, in a long flowy dress, and just walk her across the battlefield in front of them, you'll watch all of them just go.

Will Spencer:

All that energy will just.

Will Spencer:

Will just bleed out, right?

Aaron Smith:

Just.

Will Spencer:

It'll just shut off.

Will Spencer:

The other situation, though, is you take a wizened old man, 85, 90 years old, with a walking stick, and he just crutches, you know, with his bad leg and kind of withered body out into the middle of the field and just looks at all the men, just looks at all of them.

Will Spencer:

I don't approve of any of you.

Will Spencer:

You'll watch them all shut down and turn around and go home.

Will Spencer:

Where are those men?

Will Spencer:

Those men are not around and they haven't been around for a while.

Will Spencer:

And, and, and I, I appreciate your observation as well, that there are no older women.

Will Spencer:

And that I think is probably the.

Will Spencer:

One of the larger problems that isn't discussed is, you know, whatever may have happened three or four generations back with someone's dad as a result of feminism, fine.

Will Spencer:

I still do believe that women, you know, from the 19, the baby boomer generation onwards, essentially, they made their choices.

Will Spencer:

You know, the, the wealthy family that I talked about earlier, the dad was a lovely man, very kind, very gracious, very generous.

Will Spencer:

And the wife was still discipling her daughters to go there, to go their own way and had no reason to do so.

Will Spencer:

She was she seemed to be quite upset about the sacrifices she had made and didn't want her own daughters to make those sacrifices for, you know, generational wealth.

Will Spencer:

So I do want to highlight that women have made their own choices to abdicate in their roles of training the younger generations, both men and women have, and not just the baby boomers.

Will Spencer:

That's echoing now down through the generations.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah.

Aaron Smith:

And I also want to point out there are older men and older women that are doing this, correct?

Will Spencer:

Yes.

Will Spencer:

As long as they're gone.

Aaron Smith:

And I want to ask them to continue to do it.

Aaron Smith:

But I also want to call out any older men or women that are listening and say, this is something that you should be doing.

Aaron Smith:

And if you don't feel qualified, if you don't feel adequate.

Aaron Smith:

First of all, we all feel that way.

Aaron Smith:

Always.

Will Spencer:

I don't, not at all.

Aaron Smith:

But maybe, maybe there's just, there's a way we're walking that makes us feel inadequate.

Aaron Smith:

Like we're not dedicating our life to the Lord.

Aaron Smith:

We're not walking with him.

Aaron Smith:

We're not abiding in the vine, you know, as a, as a branch who needs to be, you know, provided all the sustenance to make fruit.

Aaron Smith:

And so we just, we need to see that.

Aaron Smith:

I just, I've been praying that God would just invigorate.

Aaron Smith:

I'm just, I'm praying for my church.

Aaron Smith:

You know, I pray that God invigorates and revives the men on my church and myself and just fills us with just more of his spirit and a desire to not just raise our families to know God, but to lift each other up and to serve each other and then to do that outside of our homes.

Aaron Smith:

And yeah, so I pray that I would continue on so that as I get older I will see myself like that and not take no guff, you know, just call boys to be men.

Will Spencer:

Well, you know how, you know how older men get there, how they get to that state?

Will Spencer:

Like you get to be an 85 year old man who calls, you know, who calls boys out on their guff and that they listen.

Will Spencer:

You know how, you know how you get there?

Aaron Smith:

No, tell me.

Will Spencer:

By taking responsible.

Will Spencer:

By taking responsibility.

Aaron Smith:

There you go.

Will Spencer:

The man, the man who has gotten to that stage is a man who decided, I'm going to take responsibility for everything around me.

Will Spencer:

Like it's all on my shoulders and I'm going to do that successfully and I'm not going to point fingers and I'm just going to take it on.

Will Spencer:

I'm going to grow and by the time he gets to 85 years old, the amount that he's accomplished, and you can feel the depth that life has carved in him.

Will Spencer:

It carves grooves in us, right?

Will Spencer:

And you feel that whether you see the scars or not in a man, you can feel them.

Will Spencer:

And those are the.

Will Spencer:

Those are the things that call young men to attention.

Will Spencer:

But we don't have fathers anymore.

Will Spencer:

We have older brothers.

Will Spencer:

Andrew Tate is not a father.

Will Spencer:

No one in the manosphere was a father.

Will Spencer:

They were all older brothers.

Will Spencer:

And it's very much like Lord of the Flies.

Will Spencer:

We're all being where we're a bunch of boys marooned on an island, being raised by older boys.

Will Spencer:

Instead of a father, God the father and a father, father and father figures coming in and being like, this is just.

Will Spencer:

No, this is not happening.

Will Spencer:

And I think that there's a real need for that.

Aaron Smith:

Absolutely.

Aaron Smith:

We need more men to be godly men.

Will Spencer:

So I did want to touch on another one of your books.

Will Spencer:

We've talked about women a little bit.

Will Spencer:

You have 31 prayers for my future wife.

Will Spencer:

You also sent me 31 prayers for my future husband.

Will Spencer:

I gave that one as a gift because I don't need it.

Will Spencer:

But let's talk about this, because we talked about the things that men can do to.

Will Spencer:

To be ready to commit.

Will Spencer:

Not to wait, but to be ready to commit.

Will Spencer:

We can.

Will Spencer:

We talked a little bit about men despairing, a little bit about the marriage options that are out there, the lack of fathers, lack of mother figures and all of that.

Will Spencer:

And yet we have God the Father in heaven, who is there for us to pray and make supplications to.

Will Spencer:

And we can pray for a wife.

Will Spencer:

But I found that the prayers in this book, prayers for my 31 prayers for my Future Wife, we're far more specific and powerful.

Will Spencer:

So maybe you can talk about this book and its companion as well.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, the.

Aaron Smith:

The Prayers for Future Husband and Wife books came out of exactly what I did and my wife did before we were married, before I even started courting her, dating her, and spending time with her, I was.

Aaron Smith:

Spent years writing prayers out for my future wife.

Aaron Smith:

You know, asking God, you know, when is she going to be here praying?

Aaron Smith:

When I was, you know, spending time with a woman that I was interested in, a female that I was interested in, be like, lord, is this person the one?

Aaron Smith:

Is this who you have for me?

Aaron Smith:

I like this about her.

Aaron Smith:

I like this about her.

Aaron Smith:

But there's this.

Aaron Smith:

And so when I proposed to her, I read some of the prayers that I had written out for My future wife.

Aaron Smith:

And I told her, I said, you're that person.

Aaron Smith:

You're the answer to these prayers.

Aaron Smith:

And so years later, after starting this ministry, our first books, we.

Aaron Smith:

Our first prayer books that we came out with were for husband and wife.

Aaron Smith:

You know, of course, because we were married and we were writing for that audience.

Aaron Smith:

But when we came out with the future prayer books, based off of this concept of like, well, why don't we help people pray for their future spouse like we did, they quickly became our most popular books.

Aaron Smith:

And we've sold way more books of these.

Aaron Smith:

And it makes sense because there's a larger audience, I think, of single people than there are of, you know, trying to get a husband and a wife on the same page, sadly, is harder to get than getting a single man who is interested in praying for his future wife or a single woman who is interested in praying for her future husband.

Aaron Smith:

But the fact that people are doing that is really awesome.

Aaron Smith:

And we also.

Aaron Smith:

If you.

Aaron Smith:

I don't know if you've read the book yet or not, but a lot of the prayers, they have, in a big way, cause you to be introspective about yourself because you start praying for something or this future person you have not met yet, probably, and you're like, wait a minute, am I that?

Aaron Smith:

And so you start praying for yourself as well, and you start asking yourself, like, I'm praying that this woman will be a good steward.

Aaron Smith:

And being.

Aaron Smith:

Staying out of debt.

Aaron Smith:

Am I, you know, spending up my credit card?

Aaron Smith:

Am I, you know, setting myself up for failure, for marriage, where I'm going to be like, hey, we're married.

Aaron Smith:

And guess What?

Aaron Smith:

I have $45,000 in consumer debt.

Aaron Smith:

Good luck helping me pay it off.

Aaron Smith:

Now, like, you start praying for these things for another person, and it very quickly becomes a mirror.

Aaron Smith:

And that's one of the powers of prayer.

Aaron Smith:

You step into the throne room of God and you're talking to him, especially when we're praying about other people.

Aaron Smith:

Often the Holy Spirit's like, great, now let's look at you.

Aaron Smith:

You're like, oh, like, I want that person to be, you know, nicer and more generous.

Aaron Smith:

And the Holy Spirit's like, well, you know, how generous are you?

Aaron Smith:

How nice were you in this situation?

Aaron Smith:

Not in a condemning way, but in a sanctifying way.

Aaron Smith:

So prayer does that when we come to God.

Aaron Smith:

It opens the door of God being able to show us and reveal to us things that are in our hearts that we didn't realize were there.

Aaron Smith:

So that's one of the special.

Aaron Smith:

You know ways these books work is it's not to replace prayer.

Aaron Smith:

We even say that in the book.

Aaron Smith:

It's, it's literally, it's a, it's to be a catalyst, it's to be a help along the way type thing.

Aaron Smith:

And our heart is that when people use these books either for their, you know, who they're engaged with, because a lot of engaged couples get these books and they'll use them leading up to what, their wedding and then they'll actually trade them and because you can write your own prayers in there, but a lot of single people using them and just getting testimonies over the years of women and men saying, I was praying for my spouse before, but now I'm realizing God wanted to prepare me and I wasn't ready in the sense of spiritually.

Aaron Smith:

I had this wrong perspective, I was looking for the wrong things.

Aaron Smith:

And when I started praying for my future spouse, I started realizing that God wanted to work on me.

Aaron Smith:

God wanted this to change in my life.

Aaron Smith:

And so that's our heart for it is that God uses them to help prepare the person to become a wife or a husband.

Aaron Smith:

Because again, you can't change anyone.

Aaron Smith:

You can only work on yourself.

Will Spencer:

So that was the thing that I had reading through many of these prayers.

Will Spencer:

It's like, okay, if God were to answer my prayer and bring me the kind of woman that I'm praying for, am I the kind of man that she getting.

Aaron Smith:

Wait a minute.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Will Spencer:

And there were some really, there were some really uncomfortable moments like, okay, I guess I gotta go work on that.

Will Spencer:

Right?

Will Spencer:

And, and the woman I gave the prayers for my future husband book had the same, had the same experience of, of seeing herself reflected in that.

Will Spencer:

And it's, and that's, and I think that's a, that's an important lesson for, for men to learn is that like, is that women do have their own, they have their own responses to sin.

Will Spencer:

Maybe they're not as upfront about it, maybe they talk about with each other.

Will Spencer:

But like, you know, you mentioned earlier about how it can seem almost life threatening to go talk, to go talk to a girl.

Will Spencer:

Right?

Will Spencer:

That's a, it seems like a dangerous thing to do.

Will Spencer:

And I think part of it, especially nowadays.

Will Spencer:

Exactly, exactly.

Will Spencer:

And I think part of that maybe I'll try and talk my way around this.

Will Spencer:

But it seems almost like there is, there is this nature of the feminine that comes across as perhaps perfect in a way in itself.

Will Spencer:

I don't know that I, I don't know.

Will Spencer:

I have to think Harder about that, but also to recognize that women would read those prayer books and, and recognize that even inside themselves that no, they're just as human as men are, but that, that, that maybe that doesn't strike men in the same way.

Will Spencer:

I'll have to do more thinking about this.

Aaron Smith:

I, I, I think I would put it, and this is a generalization of course, but I think often men are very aware of their own shortcomings and women are also very aware of our shortcomings.

Aaron Smith:

So.

Will Spencer:

Yes.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

Yes.

Will Spencer:

So just real quick, do you and your wife talk about the ministry that you've built together?

Will Spencer:

Are you surprised that this has become the thing it is because it didn't sound like way back when that you set out to be this kind of creator or to build this life for yourselves.

Will Spencer:

But it seems like it's, you know, God has offered you the opportunity, he opened the door, you walk through it, and it's been quite successful for you and your family.

Will Spencer:

Is this surprising or does it kind of make sense to you or does it take both of you by surprise?

Aaron Smith:

It's not surprising anymore.

Aaron Smith:

There's definitely been moments of like, what, like, how did this even happen?

Aaron Smith:

Like, how are we, like we, at one point for, for several years actually Hobby Lobby was buying a bunch of our books and we were in every Hobby Lobby store in the country.

Aaron Smith:

And so when that happened, I was like, how, like, how is this even happening right now?

Aaron Smith:

And we were like one of the, I'm pretty sure we, the, we were the first self published books that they ever put in their stores.

Aaron Smith:

And so things like that are, it's like, okay, God, you're, that's crazy.

Aaron Smith:

Thank you.

Aaron Smith:

I didn't deserve it, but you made this happen.

Aaron Smith:

I couldn't have done it because I had nothing, nothing directly to do with it.

Aaron Smith:

They just reached out and said, hey, we're interested in your books.

Aaron Smith:

And we're like, I'm like, okay.

Aaron Smith:

But so there's been moments like that that have been surprising.

Aaron Smith:

I tend to be the kind of person that doesn't think too hard about too much stuff.

Aaron Smith:

So I kind of like, what I mean by that is I'm here now and I'm just taking the next step forward.

Aaron Smith:

And so in the Marriage After God book, we talk about this in the sense of it's where I'm at today.

Aaron Smith:

The yes that I'm at today started off with a yes 20 years ago, and then another little yes after that and another little yes.

Aaron Smith:

So God's always leading us somewhere.

Aaron Smith:

If we're Looking, we're paying attention to it.

Aaron Smith:

And often it's just.

Aaron Smith:

It's a series of yeses to God.

Aaron Smith:

It's like, yes, I will do that.

Aaron Smith:

Yes, I'll do that.

Aaron Smith:

Yes, I'll do that.

Aaron Smith:

And so we didn't get married.

Aaron Smith:

And I didn't say to my wife, like, let's start a marriage ministry.

Aaron Smith:

We had, to be honest.

Aaron Smith:

We almost got divorced four and a half years into marriage.

Aaron Smith:

We were done marriage.

Aaron Smith:

So this came out of that.

Aaron Smith:

And so when we started saying yes to God of like, yes, well, I'm going to humble myself and stick it out with.

Aaron Smith:

Even if it doesn't turn out the way I want, I'm not going to give up on my bride.

Aaron Smith:

We said yes to certain jobs that gave us certain talents to do these sorts of things.

Aaron Smith:

My wife has always had a talent for writing, but I asked her one day, I said, hey, we're dealing with some stuff.

Aaron Smith:

Would you be interested in having me set you up a blog and you just process some of this stuff in writing?

Aaron Smith:

She said yes to that.

Aaron Smith:

That was another small yes.

Aaron Smith:

And it wasn't like I had a plan of any of this.

Aaron Smith:

It was just, I was building websites and I wanted to practice building a blog, and I thought it would be a cool idea that she would write on it about things that we were going through and things that God was revealing to us.

Aaron Smith:

So it's a series of small yeses that build into big yeses.

Aaron Smith:

And it just proves what the Scriptures say, you know, you're faithful with small, with the little, and you'll be faithful with much.

Aaron Smith:

If you're faithful with, unfaithful with a little, you're not going to be faithful with anything.

Aaron Smith:

And so in some sense, yes, I look back and I'm like, I don't.

Aaron Smith:

This was never the plan, but here we are.

Aaron Smith:

So what does it look like tomorrow?

Aaron Smith:

I have no idea, but here I am today.

Will Spencer:

Well, the Lord directs our steps, right.

Will Spencer:

And sometimes he has better things in store for us than we would plan for ourselves.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah, I would never have planned this for me.

Will Spencer:

Exactly.

Aaron Smith:

Yeah.

Will Spencer:

Well, I.

Will Spencer:

I want to thank you for your ministry and.

Will Spencer:

And for your writing and for your books and for your time as well.

Will Spencer:

I've certainly been blessed by things that you and your wife do, and I've been looking forward to having this conversation because I think many more men and women can be blessed by them.

Will Spencer:

Especially because it does seem that there's, like I said, a lot of hopelessness out there, a lot of worry, a lot of fear.

Will Spencer:

Despair, anxiety and I don't believe that it has to be that way.

Will Spencer:

So between your marriage After God books and your prayers for your wife and husband books, I think you provide and will provide a lot of hope for for people that are wondering about their destiny and future in marriage.

Aaron Smith:

Thank you.

Aaron Smith:

That's what I hope to point people to Jesus and that's all he is our hope.

Aaron Smith:

So amen.

Will Spencer:

Where would you like to send people to find out more about you and what you do?

Aaron Smith:

They can find us pretty much on most social media platforms.

Aaron Smith:

Arrange after God and marriageaftergod.com is where they can find our blogs and our podcast.

Aaron Smith:

I have a podcast called Marriage After God.

Aaron Smith:

If you just Google Marriage After God to be honest, you'll find all of our stuff.

Will Spencer:

Great.

Will Spencer:

Yeah, I'll be sure to send them your way.

Will Spencer:

Thank you so much for your time Aaron.

Aaron Smith:

Thanks Will.

Aaron Smith:

Glad to be here.

Will Spencer:

Sa.

Follow

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube