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I say it all the time. I've been seeing some of those four star reviews. Y'all think y'all funny.
Y'all really think y'all funny. I'm about to come through that camera right there and we'll get to you, Michael. Who is Michael? He left a five star review. I mean, he left a four star review thinking he was going to be funny.
You think I can't find out where you live, Michael? I'm not going to come to nobody else. Link is in the description below and we are here in the studio with Dr. Abbadan Shah, who is a PhD in New Testament textual criticism alongside the very lovely, the very demure, very mindful, perma-guest, Nicole Shah. It's a meme.
It's a TikTok meme. Very mindful. Very demure. Very cutesy. Nicole, welcome back to the show. Thank y'all for having me. Absolutely.
Dr. Shah would like to welcome you two along with the lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly, lowly Ryan Hill. Very good. Were you staring at me in the beginning? Yeah, I was.
Okay. I could feel your gaze as I was trying to get through my intro and I'm like, what? Did I say something wrong?
What's happening? You looked odd. You were real. You were like, well, you looked like someone was holding you at gunpoint. That's because I was trying to focus when you were. You look like someone was like, had a gun in like in your spine and you were like reading like a hostage.
It felt a little like that with your gaze. Our verse of the day today comes from Philippians chapter two verse four. Let each of you look not only for his own interests, but also for the interest of others. That's hard to do. You would think that's like an easy thing to do because like now that I'm a Christian, I'm supposed to instantly care about other people, but your own thoughts and your own wants and desires don't go away. Right. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned and God came to to question them. Adam immediately blamed Eve. Yeah, true.
And that's kind of interesting. Ultimate red flag. Quick to point fingers. My fault is her.
The woman you gave me. You know, God like raised an eyebrow like, hold on, are you for real? Did you? Do you think he ever took Adam to task over that? Like, let's, let's talk about that. Yeah. I'm sure.
I'm sure Adam knew when he did that, that God's going to have a talk with him. One of those things where you say it and as soon as it leaves your mouth, you're like, you know, these long talks we had in the cool of the day. Well, it's about to heat up a little bit.
I'm going to give myself one of these right here. What did you say? You didn't say that. I did. You said you were looking at me. I said your captious gaze.
How often did you do it? I just said it once. Okay. So what we need to do from now on is you have to use it twice. If you don't get it in, I mean, if you get it in, you got to do it one more time. You got to do it one more time because I've done it before.
I don't want to say anything. I do it one more time. And then, then just make sure you get it in. I didn't, I didn't get it. It gets tricky because for those of you who do not know, we're talking about the secret word, secret word, secret word, and then you need to trap the other person. So you need to sometimes give a word and then do it again. And the person says, Oh, I know what you're doing. And then you go, no, no.
And then he can bring in the real world. Those aren't, those aren't good tactics. I'm surprised Nicole didn't catch captious. I didn't. You don't even care. Do you?
You just kind of hear, Hey, I wanted to ask you guys. I don't know how, how present y'all are on Tik TOK, but have y'all been seeing, I don't have a Tik TOK account. So I don't know if it's made its way to any other like Instagram or Facebook or whatever, but have y'all been seeing the green tux girl?
No. Green tux girl is going absolutely crazy right now. So this is this girl and her fiance wants to wear green tux and the internet, the entire internet is split down the middle between she's right.
And the fiance is right. David has it pulled up. I don't think I'm going to wear a black tux. I think, I think you are going to wear a black tux. No, I don't want to be like everyone else. What color did you have in mind?
No, sorry. You can pick something else that you want because it's not, it's not going to be that collectively we're deciding it's going to be a black tux. You're saying that it's going to be green tux.
No. So, so first things first, I wore green tux to my brother-in-law's wedding. It actually looked pretty good. Everybody was in a green tux though. I can't tell if he's saying I want everyone to wear green tux or I want to wear green tux. So I'm different than the groomsmen. It sounds like he wants to be different than other grooms that get married. Like he wants to stand out in their wedding photos. I don't know about the rest of the wedding party. What do you think? That was your green tux at the wedding? I would say no, but then again, I'm more of a traditionalist. Right.
What do you think? I remember going to that wedding and I remember seeing the gr, and I could hardly tell they were green because they were dark. It was a dark, like a dark forest green. That I don't mind. But if it looks like Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels and Dumb and Dumber.
Not going for that. Or the mask. The mask is green or yellow? The mask is yellow. The mask is green. The suit's yellow. So here's what everyone's saying.
The argument is split two ways and for some reason it's just going to the extremes. It's his wedding too. He can wear whatever he wants, no questions asked. If he wants to wear a clown suit, he can do that.
Cannot do that. No. The other side is it's not his day. It's the bride's day. No one's meeting in the middle. I personally, and I don't think this is going to be popular. I just feel like it's not his day.
Okay. I feel like it's not his day. I know it's his wedding, but it's not his day. But also my opinion is who's forking over the money. Who paying for the evening's the bride's.
Of course it is. But I don't know if they're paying for the suits. No, they're not paying for the suits. I doubt they're paying for the suits. But they're paying for the photographer.
That's what I'm saying. I mean, if I am forking over the most money for a wedding, if my parents are doing that and even though you're only paying for your tux or your suit or whatever, my opinion is different. My opinion is that when it comes to weddings or couples going out together, whether it is to a wedding or to a function or to a church where you are going to be together, you need to not necessarily match in the sense of the old fashioned match. Like you've got to have a red.
I got to have a red. No, but it needs to compliment each other. I think that is important. I don't think my wife always sees that. Right. So I have to, she tried to walk out wearing something different than what you were.
Yeah. And I'm like, we need to sort of at least compliment. So what usually he does is he just, he waits to see what I'm wearing and then he goes to find us a tie that will match or a shirt that will compliment.
And Sunday morning I've stopped trying to match because it's very difficult. Nicole is sometimes helping with the kids ministry. Sometimes she's on the worship team.
Sometimes she is in the resource center. So it's a lot of different things you're wearing. It's hard to say let's match, but if we're going to a function, we're going to be together. Then you need to at least ask, what are you wearing?
I agree with that. She doesn't do that. She's just going to wear what she wants to wear. And that's bad. It looks bad. Does she wear what she wants? And then she says, you can match me or she just like, she doesn't care about that. I'm wearing this.
Yeah. So it looks great. And it's like, but you're wearing jeans. I am wearing dress pants or I'm wearing jeans. So now I cannot be like, you're wearing this nice dressed outfit and I'm wearing jeans.
It cannot be one or the other. So you've, so you've married two girls off, like two of your daughters, not that you've married two girls, but both of your girls are married and you married them. If they came to, if you came in and overheard an argument and Jarrett was saying, Abigail, I want to wear this tux. And Abigail said, you are not wearing that tux, period. You would be like, well, he ain't wearing that tux.
Or would you say Abigail, he can wear what he wants? Well, the thing is knowing my two girls. Okay. And they're different from each other, but in many ways they're very similar.
And they will tell their husbands what to wear. Now. Okay. I'm with you. It's very true. I'm with you. I'm with you. That is, and that is true.
That is true. I think I've heard that conversation before. Maybe not with the wedding. If you walked in. Abby was like, no, no Jarrett. No. And I've seen Rebecca do the same. It's like, oh no, you're not doing that.
I'll also like the, like the whole kindergarten answer. Like you can pick something else. Yeah.
You can pick something else that you like. I say that to Gavin all the time. If you walked in and Jarrett was like, Abigail, I'm telling you right now, that's not your wedding dress.
You're not wearing that to the wedding. Would you be like, all right, now we're going to have a problem. Yeah. Especially after we spent all that money on that dress. Oh yeah.
The mama, the mother-in-law would have a problem. I'm with you. I feel like, I don't know why all of a sudden now in like the 2010s and onwards, we're trying to pretend like the dudes really care about the wedding. Yeah. I don't know.
What do you think? Well, it's not that the guys don't care about the wedding, but when it comes down to it, it really is the bride's day. It's her day.
Here's a hot take. I did not wear a black tux to my wedding. What did you wear?
Did you really? I had a white tux. Get out of here. A white tux.
I'm just kidding. I've seen your tux. It looked really good. I wore a white tux. I had a purple, our colors were purple, so I had a purple vest and purple tie.
Oh, okay. But the tux, like the jacket, the pants were white. What color was the shirt? White. White.
Okay. White shoes. I mean, I was, everything was white. That was Charleston. Yeah.
Charleston. Did you do the Charleston? No, but we did dance.
We did like, we did the routine to Footloose. Yeah. Yeah.
I've seen that. But we, that was important to us to both be in white. Now in the, in the head space that I'm in, would I have chosen that? I don't know.
I didn't even think about that. I like the black tux and white. You stole the bride's color. But we agreed on it as a couple. No, this wasn't me saying, honey, I think I'm going to wear a white tux. You pressured her. No, I did not. You pressured her, dude.
You stole her wedding. I'm just joking. This was before TikTok, so we couldn't get flamed on the internet. I'm trying to make Ryan the bad guy.
I got in a lot of trouble on TikTok recently. But I mean, preference wise, as far as what pictures look like, I really think it's, it's the bride's final say. I do too, man. I do too. I just, I know, I know it's not the answer everybody wants to hear, but I just feel like it's her day. You got to give it to her, man. You got to give it to her. You get the whole rest of the marriage. You know, you let her make it.
Maybe. Speaking of the whole rest of the marriage, 30 years. 30 years anniversary.
There was a reason we hadn't pulled on today. 30 years. That's the reason why we're talking about all this wedding stuff is because, uh, we just celebrated January the 7th. We celebrated our 30 years. It's great. How's it been?
How's it been Nicole? 30 years. 30 years. There are days that it seems like it was just yesterday. We, yesterday we got married and then there are days that it feels like I have never been without him. So it's, it's, it's interesting because, you know, I used to say when we've been married longer than we were ever single, we'll have been married a long time.
Boy, that should be terrible. Think about this. I'm barely 30 years old. I'm 32.
You got married. I was two years old. You were born in what, 1993? 92.
Ellie was born in 93. Wow. So, uh, take us back to that day. What do you remember? What do you remember thinking? What do you remember feeling?
We had this conversation with Dr. Shel on the show recently. What do you remember feeling? Um, I was excited. Where was I? Yeah. I was about to say, did you, I can tell you where he wasn't.
So I was going to try to get to this point, but it looks like we're jumping in. Did you kick him out of the basement? Well, I did, but it was more of the thing, you know, nowadays it doesn't matter, but, and it probably didn't even matter in the mid nineties, but I was just trying, I was that bride that is bad luck to see the bride on the day of the wedding until she's walking down the aisle. And I think based on the story Dr. Shaw told, you weren't going to come into the basement. You had no plans to go down there and he had no plans to go up. I don't guess so. I don't remember, but I just didn't, I didn't want to chance it.
Right. Because the church was literally like 10 steps from the house. Do you feel like maybe there could have been some coordination between bridesmaids and groomsmen?
Like, Hey, make sure you keep him away from the window. But it was like why groomsmen were useless. But you, you, you didn't want there to be a 1% chance. You didn't want to be thinking about it or worried about it during the prep. So you know, I think Nicole just stuck to her guns. Like this is how it's going to be. And if it was today, I would have said, no, I'm not going to stay here and I'll be out of your way.
And no, it's not. Cause those of you who've heard the story before, I had to go spend the night with one of my groomsmen and another guy who was one of the ushers. Right. Did you end up like eating alone at a McDonald's or something like that? That morning, I mean, I sat at a McDonald's and all that night, I mean, I slept on the couch and they joked around, laughed. Didn't, didn't even throw me a, you know, groom, what do you call it?
A bachelor party, nothing. So I was like, but you should have felt bad 30 years ago. Like feeling bad here on the show doesn't really do anything. I'd like to feel bad retroactively.
If you felt bad then he might've had a place to sleep. Or maybe, but you know, I didn't have a bachelorette party either because my, my maid of honor was 12. Huh? My maid of honor was 12.
Melissa was 12. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. That's cute. Okay. Yeah, that is kind of cute. But you had others, but they ended up being your cousins.
So really they're not going to do anything. So we had useless groomsmen and bridesmaids. Wasn't your brother a groomsman?
Yeah, all useless. I gave him a, a bachelor party. Yeah. Yeah, I did.
I did. All his groomsmen friends, you know, I invited them over. One of them, I told, I told him all, I was like, it's a surprise.
And he walks up to him in the capture. Hey Fred, what time is your bachelorette party tonight? Wow. And Fred's like, oh, I don't know. I think, oh, shucks.
I was not supposed to ask you, but I was like, oh, you think? Wow. I even remember him to this day. Mark Avery. Mark. Mark Avery. Yeah. Went out there and asked that question. But anyways, still living.
I'm sure somewhere. Hey Mark Avery. You done goofed Mark. Write into the show and tell us what in the world you were thinking. No, just write into the show with an apology.
Yeah, that'd be great. 30 years of marriage. I mean, we were reminiscing about the wedding day, 30 years of marriage. What do you feel like you have learned? What do you feel like you, what would you say to yourselves?
That's a good question. What would you say to yourselves 30 years ago? Wow. Who goes far as me or you? Me. Probably.
I would tell myself if I could go back in time, I would, I would tell myself, you know, this is going to be the best of your life, but at the same time, it's also going to be a learning, a growing, a tough part of life. Yeah. You know, I didn't quite understand that. So it was both, it's going to be the best thing that happens. And at the same time, it's going to be a tough thing. Right.
That's true. Because marriage is both. There are joys and then there are also difficult seasons.
There are difficult seasons. I would tell myself, my younger self, I guess, and I'm glad that, I'm glad that we both came from homes that our parents stayed married, you know, until death parted them. And because that, because I believe there were probably times in our marriage that if we didn't have that, there probably would have been times that we would not be together.
Wow. Cause it's marriage is like he said, and like, like Abaddon said, marriage is wonderful, but it takes a lot of work. And if you're not willing, if you're not willing to put the work in, then it's going to be difficult. It's going to, there's going to be more hard days than good days.
Yeah. You know, I see a lot of people on social media on all sorts of platforms talking about that where like, they are not willing to put in the work. And so they wonder why divorce is always the, it's almost the first or second option, you know, it's, it's like, Oh man, I, and it's never like, I'm not willing to put in the work.
It's always that this person is not good. My partner's not good. I came into this, I'm the exact same person that I was when I got married.
And so it must be that my partner is no good, a man or a woman. And they jumped to divorce. But I like what, you know, when we, when Ellie and I got married, we did our premarital counseling under Dr. Shah. And, you know, I remember to this day, I'll never forget. He said, you, you can't, you should not get married if divorce is even an option.
You have to go into it saying that no matter what happens, divorce is off the table. That has served us. That has really, really, really served us because it's like, well, we have no choice. We have to figure this out. We have to reconcile. And so that means taking a look at myself, taking a look at yourself and then coming back together.
There's no way out. You know what I mean? I feel like those people who are out there, you know, and they think divorce is the only option and then you've seen these people who have been married more than once. Well, there's a common denominator and it's you. So there's got, you know, it's not always, it's probably never the other person, but true. And, and in a, in a situation like yours and like ours where there's like, Hey, there is no chance of divorce.
It's not on the table. There's no choice but to improve, you know, because then I can say, and I have the freedom to say, you know what, I'm allowed to be a flawed person and I'm allowed to work on it without fear of losing this great thing that God has given me and my spouse. Another thing that we, I believe we did right was we educated ourselves. Not that we always did it the best way, but we spent time learning about marriage.
Like whatever you work on is going to get better if you work on it the right way and you have the right tools, right resources, whatever. And so I think that was always there and that served us very well that we're going to go to a seminar. If there's a marriage seminar, we're going to go. If there's going to be a conference, we're going to go. If we can afford it and go away on a weekend to go attend this, this marriage seminar with some famous experts, counselors, psychologists, whatever, from a biblical perspective, we're going to go attend it. If there's a podcast that's a podcast, of course, came later in our marriage years, but there's a podcast that's going to benefit us. We're going to get on it.
So all those things really helped us. I'm not going to say one book or one podcast really radically is the only reason why we're together, but I think all together. It was a mindset of wanting to learn and grow, wanting to learn, grow, invest, invest in your marriage. Yeah. You have to, you have to invest in it. If you, if you don't, if there's not some work every day, then you're not going anywhere.
I mean, it's, it's almost like you're on a treadmill that you're just walking, but you're not getting anywhere. I appreciate, you know, the chance to, to learn from you both and to the chance to, you know, see, see and benefit from your marriage up close. I mean, we've heard from both of you in a weekend messages about marriage several times and through things like the radio show broadcasting to our listeners. I think one of the biggest things that I've learned from, from just spending time with both of you and from, from seeing your marriage for the past more than a decade now is your spouse is not your enemy. Yeah, there is an enemy.
There is an enemy in your marriage and, and that enemy wants to divide you and that enemy wants to, to seek to destroy you and rip apart what God has brought together, but it is not your spouse. Yeah. And there have been moments where Elizabeth and I have been in just knock down, drag out fights, arguments, just, and, and it was like a moment of clarity.
And I remember that this, this gift that God has given me, this woman, this is not my enemy. Yep. Yes.
I'm frustrated. Yes. Yes. We need to hash this issue out, but that's not my enemy. That's my teammate.
That's my partner. I think a lot of times this, and this is, this'll go into kind of, cause I've learned a lot from watching you guys as well. And I think the, just to say it up top, the, the one thing I've learned from you guys is that you're on mission together. You don't have different goals.
You don't have, I mean, you've got different things that you're studying in different paths, but your goal, your mission is the same. You're moving together. And so like with us and with a lot of couples, what I see is you've got a husband who works, a wife who might work or stay at home, but like the marriage itself, that's the goal with you guys. It's like our marriage is working to serve our mission. And our mission is this place, our family, like our kids' futures, but, but it's not like I just want to like each other and live out the rest of our days liking each other. And that's a good marriage.
It's like our marriage serves to, to, to push our, our collective mission. That's a great observation. I don't even think about that, but that's, that's very true. Very true that, and that has helped us well.
I will have to say that that, that definitely did not originate with me. It originated with him, with the mission, you know, having a mission for your marriage. That was working towards a mission, right?
Like the church or building God's kingdom or raising children who will, who will make an impact in the world for the gospel of Christ. That was our mission. And so we have to work on that. We got to get this right. We have to resolve this conflict. We have to forgive here. All those things were done with a purpose rather than, we just got to have a godly marriage. No, I agree.
I agree. And I think you said it just there. You're building God's kingdom. So building the church, that's something that you guys, your marriage serves to build the church so that God's kingdom, same with your children, you build up God worshipers who also go out and have families of their own. They're all building God's kingdom. And I think seeing you two work together towards a mission has helped me and Ellie tremendously because now I genuinely feel that now we are on that same page and I feel like our marriage is better than ever thanks to that mindset that we adopted from y'all.
Yeah. And the wrong missions would be a lot of money or buying a lot of businesses or owning your own business. I mean, people will work towards that as the goal and that's fine in some ways because in a sense we're doing the same thing too.
But have some eternality to what you're doing. So let that be like, yes, we're going to have this million dollar business so that we can serve God better. So that when we gain the profit, we can use it on missions or to radically impact our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So let that be the mission behind. So you don't have to be all in church ministry. You don't have to all be in pastoral ministry to have this vision. You can have your own vision, but our hope behind it is God's kingdom. As Christians and as a married couple, I mean, you need to ask yourself where we're headed, what our goal is, is eternity in mind.
If it doesn't have any internal significance, then what are you doing? Good point. So, I mean, if you keep that in mind as you move towards goals in your life, you know, in your marriage, does this have an eternal, you know, perspective or, you know, whatever it is, then that makes all the difference.
Good point. Because Christians, you often hear like young Christian people say, I'm only dating with marriage in mind. It's like, that's fine.
But if you get married at 19, 20, 20 years old and you've met this ultimate goal that you've set for yourself, like, what do you do with the rest of your life? And I appreciate that. I appreciate the gospel being at the center of your marriage. One thing I would say, if I could give an advice to people, especially regarding conflicts, because conflict is a big part of marriage, huge part of marriage.
And I said this and it's original to me. So there's a few things are. I said a while back that we argue on emotions and then we try to reconcile on facts. We argue because in the moment we're upset, we're angry, we're hurt. And so now we're doing, but we reconcile on facts, which is like, so you said this and then I said that, and then we said this, but then you said that and then you did this and that, and it never works out. So when you're trying to argue, go back to argue with facts and reconcile with emotions, which means, yeah, you need to make sure your facts are facts, rather than emotions are running the temperature of your conflict or conversation. And then reconcile on emotions, which means it's not like we're going to get all this sorted out and then figure out, oh, you're to be blamed then, you know, maybe that can work. But most of the time it's like, you know what, we're just going to love each other and God is good and we're not going to let this stop us.
And somehow it just flushes all that garbage away. It's great advice. It's been helpful for me. Absolutely. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. Such a special episode for us.
Always, always, always. Make sure you guys join us tomorrow, same time, same station. We're going to be diving into another great topic here on The Clearview Today Show. Thanks again to our sponsors for making today's episode possible. And don't forget that you can support us by subscribing to the show on iTunes if you want to re-listen or share it with a friend. And you can always support us financially at ClearviewTodayShow.com. John, anything you want to plug as we close today? Yes, absolutely.
I want to plug Dr. John and Nicole's book, 30 Days of Praying for America, Daily Devotions to Heal Our Nation. That's Nicole in the back right there. You see that, Nicole? You remember taking that picture? I do.
That's a handsome couple right there. This is book three in the 30-day series. You can also get books one and two at the same place on Amazon.com. You can get them on Audible as well. We're working on getting 30 Days of Praying for America available on Audible as well.
Sit tight. We've got some original music in the pipeline. Great and Awesome is our new single.
It's coming out in just a couple of days. We want you guys to be able to hear it. Also, be aware that you can listen to all of our existing music right now on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, anywhere digital music is streamed or sold.
That's right. Lots of great content coming your way. Make sure you guys tune in. We love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview today.
