Cheerleading Your Spouse

The Bible says we are to build one another up, and that applies in a marriage relationship. What do you do if you look at your spouse and you go, there's just not much I can find that's encouraging here?

Here's Aaron Ivey. It's not about being fake. It's not about just, oh, you're awesome. It's about finding something in your spouse that you can cheer on, right? Because there's a lot of things about me that Jamie shouldn't cheer on. There are things that I need to change still. There are ways that I still need to grow and mature and all that kind of stuff. But in your spouse, no matter who they are, you can find something in them to cheer.

It's like believing into them something that's true about themselves. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. When was the last time you were a cheerleader for your spouse? And when was the last time your spouse would say, I felt like you were encouraging me? We're going to talk more about the priority of encouragement today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. One of my favorite video clips from the Art of Marriage video series that Family Life produced a number of years ago was something that was shared with us by our mutual friend Robin McKelvey. Robin and her husband Ray speak at the Family Life Weekend to remember marriage getaways with us. And Robin made the statement, she talked about the fact that in high school, she had been a cheerleader.

Right. And she said the team that they cheered for didn't win a game all season. And you know, here it is the fourth quarter and you're down by four touchdowns and the team's not coming. I know a lot about being down and not winning, Bob.

And it's hard to stay motivated. Yeah, the cheerleaders are there trying to get the crowd excited and nobody's believing them. They're going, you could do this. Robin said, we cheered for a stinky team, but we had to keep cheering for them even when they were stinky. And she said, and then she realized when she got married, she had to take off her wedding dress, she said, and put on a cheerleader uniform. And cheer for the stinky team?

There were days the team was not playing well and you still have to cheer them on. It's true. You guys had an opportunity to talk about this subject recently with friends of ours, Erin and Jamie Ivey. Many of our listeners probably listen to Jamie's podcast, which is called The Happy Hour.

Erin, her husband, is worship pastor at Austin Stone Church in Austin, Texas. He's a songwriter. He's a musician. And in fact, Dave, since you played a song for him that you had written, you decided during this time, maybe you'd let the pro take the guitar.

He sort of wanted to one up me and he surely did. Let's listen to your conversation with the Iveys. You got a song for us?

Sure. I mean, you know, the book's about love, so this is a song called Your Love is Relentless. It's about Jesus. It's not about Jamie, even though this has been a big topic of fighting for Jamie and I for 20 years. You haven't written a song about her in 20 years.

I wrote one song about Jamie and she heard it and she was like, eh. Because it was a joke. It wasn't a joke.

I meant it very seriously. And so I tell him all the time, I'm like, can you just stop writing songs about Jesus and write songs about Jamie? And he won't. Well, now he's going to. I did once.

You'll miss that part. Just call it a song about Jay and it could be about either one. Or Your Love is Relentless. That could be about me. That could be you.

Oh, that's true. That's setting you up for some serious failure. It's just setting me up for some failure. Okay, all right. Do you really want me to do this? Yeah, do it. Yeah.

My heart has wandered to a faraway place Far from where I belong My affections have drifting From everything that is real To everything that is wrong Oh, but still you come Like a rushing wind you'll call There is mercy for the likes of me In truth and grace you'll come Your love is relentless You'll stop at nothing Chasing me down to all my heart you have found So I won't be timid No fear in returning I'm running fast Into your arms I'll collapse Your relentless love, oh Jesus Your relentless love, oh Jesus You've come for me once You'll do it again Your love is relentless You've come for me once You'll do it again Your love is relentless, yes You've come for me once I know you'll do it again Your love is relentless Everybody knows You've come for me once I know you'll do it again Your love is relentless That is so good. Yeah, all right. Thank you. Good job, babe. I listened to you, Erin, and I'm thinking about your book. Like, Jamie, you are so gifted. You're a communicator.

You're a writer. And then, Erin, your gifts are different, and yet you guys complement each other well without competing or being jealous of each other. Yeah. Is that pretty typical? Or do you get jealous of one another and your giftings?

I don't think we get jealous of one another. No. No.

I would say the thing that I have to work the hardest at is to, let me just throw all my junk on the table. Oh, good, good. Is to remember to, like, cheer Erin on in what he's doing, if that makes sense. Yeah. Because I can just get my head down, and Erin's a word of affirmation guy.

I've had to learn 20 years. I mean, he'll come in with a new song. And when I tell you guys that I'm not musical, it- She ain't musical, y'all. I mean, it's like all you guys started singing, there's no way I would even gonna open my mouth with this mic in front of me.

Nope. So it's not even that I can't sing. I don't understand it.

It all kind of sounds the same to me. I mean, it's just not what I do. And so he can bring a song in, and many times I have failed and just been like, okay, yeah, it's great, whatever.

What do you want to do? And that's been so hurtful to him. And so I think- Because it's very vulnerable to write a song. Very, yeah, very.

Because it's exposing- It's a piece of your heart, your soul kind of coming out there. And yet, Jamie, I can relate to you because with Dave, he was an athlete. He started this church. He's a great pastor. He's a great communicator.

And I feel like, oh, everybody's telling him he's great all the time. You have a whole chapter called Cheer. And I'm sure you never read our vertical marriage book, but there's a moment in our marriage, and I'll make it very brief because I want to hear what you think of this and then how it applies to marriage. But Ann was asked to speak at our church to mothers of preschoolers.

And she says to me last minute, hey, you want to go with me? It'd be great. It's only women. They'd probably love to hear a man's perspective. They're going to love Pastor Dave coming.

Like, oh, they're going to love it. Come with me. So we go. She's like, what are you going to talk about? I go, I don't know. You do your thing, and I'll just be color commentary. So he gets all animated, and he's getting into this, and I have no idea what he's going to say. And he goes, women, I don't think you get what it's like to be a man.

That's true. And he goes, you know, what happens is usually as little boys, we have someone in our lives cheering for us. Like, yeah, you're good at this.

You're good. Mom, Dad, watch me. He goes, and then I found out I was good in sports. And so I have coaches and teachers like, Dave Wilson, you're good at this. And they're cheering for me. He goes, I played college football.

I was a quarterback. So I have fans cheering for me. And he goes, and then when I met Ann, she basically says, of all the men in the world, I choose you, Dave Wilson.

You're the man. And she's cheering for me. And I'm sitting on this stool, and he's up, and he's all amped up, and he's saying this stuff. And I have never- I can see it. I can see it.

I have never said this. Yeah. I think it's the first time it came out that way. And I'm like, wow.

This is gold. And I have never heard it in my life. And I'm like, well, I never knew that. That's what he felt. And then he goes, and you know what it's like now, women? It's like this. I walk in the door at the end of a long day, and all I hear is boo, boo.

And I'm sitting on this stool like- You're mortified. Oh my goodness. You're like, this is my event. We should have always talked about this. Yes. Exactly. You're the guest. It's my event.

Yes. We get in the car. I didn't even know how we ended. We get in the car, and I'm like, what was that? He goes, I don't know.

It just came out. I said, that was God. That's what that was. Oh my goodness. And again, I said, I am not booing you. I am helping you. She did.

Because everybody says, oh Dave, you're amazing. And she's not going to tell you this part, and we're done with our, we want to hear from you again. No, this is too good. Keep going. She actually said, I am the Holy Spirit.

I did. I'm helping the Holy Spirit. She said, I am the Holy Spirit. I am the Holy Spirit's helper. I love that. There you go.

He's called the helper, not you. But yeah, it's that whole, how important is it that your spouse feels like you're being cheered by the other? I mean, talk about that. You wrote about it.

I mean, it's a chapter title. I think it's one of the most foundational things to our marriage, is that we're each other's biggest cheerleaders. So you never had that feeling of boo.

I'm sure you have. We've had moments where it's been like, I don't feel like you're like for me, and you are the loudest cheerleader in my life. But I would say, you know, it started out with us realizing how important that that is, and us like really challenging ourselves and each other to be each other's biggest cheerleaders. Because if you think about it, when you're dating somebody, you have no problem cheering them on. You're writing them letters. You can't wait to take them flowers or pick them up and tell them how beautiful they are. But for whatever reason, whenever you get married, that seems to kind of go away because you assume, well, of course, you know, I love you. I mean, I'm still here, right?

But it just takes much more work and intentionality to go, no, I want to keep reminding you that I love you. And here's why. Because every person is going to be cheered on by somebody in their life. Your spouse has a boss, a supervisor, they have a professor. They've got people in their life that really esteem them or think highly of them. And so they're going to find verbal affirmation.

They're going to find cheering from somebody. And if it's not you, that's going to become more and more attractive and more and more appreciated. I tell this story in my portion of the book. It was after doing a live music thing in front of a big group of people.

And I was standing on the side of the stage and Jamie wasn't at this event. This woman walked right up to me and she grabbed my elbow and she just said like the kindest things in the world about me. Like you are awesome.

Your songs have changed my life. All this kind of stuff that at the end of the day is like very nice, genuine words that I know she meant and I'm super humbled by. But also though in that moment, it felt really good. It felt so good to be cheered on by somebody. I remember going home and telling Jamie about this whole experience because I knew that it's really easy and it's possible to just want to get that from people. And if Jamie is like silent about cheering me on, then I'm going to start going and looking for verbal affirmation, whether it's online on Instagram or it's, you know, just hearing people say nice things. And one, one of the ways for me to like make sure that I'm like rooted and grounded and humble is to know that my spouse is actually the biggest cheerleader in my life because at the end of the day, who do I really want to believe in me? It's Jamie, not a complete stranger that I'll never see again. And so we just talk about that a lot in our marriage for me to be able to say like, Hey Jamie, this is important for me. Not just so you're puffing me up.

I don't need to feel better about myself, but I want to know that you still believe in me after all these years. And Jamie also gets a lot of affirmation online from people reading her books. And I've just made a commitment. Nobody is going to out cheer Jamie Ivy besides me, nobody. That's my commitment.

Right? Cause I want her to get that from me. And you're cheering and you're cheering to one another carries so much more weight. Way more. Cause when somebody comes up to you after a song or after a sermon for me and they say great things, they don't know this, but in your mind, aren't you thinking they don't know me. Absolutely. If they knew the real me.

Absolutely. If they know the real you. Or your husband is still cheering.

That's like, wow. Well, where we see so many marriages fall apart is they get that affirmation and at first they're like, well, they don't really know me, but then that becomes exciting. Oh, somebody cheered me on and they don't have to deal with all of my baggage. They don't know the real me. They don't know that I'm a jerk at home. So I'm just going to live in that world and then fake it at home. That's how marriages fall apart.

Yes. And booing again, we, you know, we're talking about, it was an exaggeration. Never has she booed me, but it felt that way.

We just did a mini like marriage retreat with NFL quarterbacks, just a group of them. And they talked about being booed. And I didn't even know this. They talked about one of their colleagues, I could mention his name, was playing during COVID. So there's no fans there and he's playing so bad.

They piped in boots in his home state. No way. And I thought, you got to be kidding me. And literally as we're sitting there, I said to him, so what's it feel like being an NFL quarterback and you get booed? And they said, it destroys us.

We can't play. It's like, I thought it was good, but I'm not. And I thought, well, how's that feel in a marriage? Who wants to come home to a spouse that's continually critiquing, downgrading. So you guys didn't experience it, but you have experienced the cheer part.

Yeah. And it's not about being fake. It's not about just, oh, you're awesome. It's about finding something in your spouse that you can cheer on. Because there's a lot of things about me that Jamie shouldn't cheer on. There are things that I need to change still. There are ways that I still need to grow and mature and all of that kind of stuff. But in your spouse, no matter who they are, you can find something in them to cheer. It's like believing into them something that's true about themselves, which I think is so important.

Can you find it? Because I'm guessing there's a listener right now going, you don't know my spouse. No, you can. Let me ask Jamie that. Because I have wives coming up to me all the time because we talk about this often and she'll say, there's nothing to cheer.

And honestly, this one time this beautiful Russian woman comes up to me and she basically, I wish I could do her Russian accent because it was beautiful, but she basically says, so you want me to be a Hollywood actor and fake it because there's nothing. Talk to the listener or even to the young wife that says, honestly, I don't see anything. You know, I think that's important to kind of back up a little bit from the cheer thing too because Erin just said, it's not about just puffing them up. It's not about them, me sitting around and every day looking at Erin and being like, you're the most amazing man I've ever met. That's not what he wants. And I just, that's dumb, you know, but it is a matter of like, how can I look at his world and his day to day life and how can I be involved in it somehow? We've said a handful of times over these days of conversations that we live very different lives.

You know, he works at a church, I run my own thing, but how can I still be for him in whatever he's doing? And so for that wife, that's like, I don't see anything good. You can at least ask about their day. You can at least sit down and actually want to listen about their day.

And I think that goes a long way just to have someone that's interested in you when you walk in the door. And we've all experienced that. And the thing is, man, when I was staying at home with little kids, the minute Erin walked in the door, I didn't care how his day was.

I just wanted him to take the children. And so that's even having to fight for that of him having to know when I come home, I got to be on and me thinking when he comes home, I can't just bail. Because now we're a team.

And so it's even just like investing in those little things and wanting to know how their day was. In my section of cheer, I tell a story. I was traveling a couple of years ago, and I was in the Nashville airport, sitting at a little table where I was working till I got on my flight. And when I travel, I don't like talking to people at all. Like I know I should be wanting to just tell everyone about Jesus, but I really just want to just do my work and get home. And I'm sitting at the table and I'm working and this man came up and he kind of sat across from me.

We're both at standing table. He's younger than I am, good looking. And he starts talking to me and I'm like trying to like not really talk to him because I don't care. But I ended up talking to this guy for like 25 minutes, not just casual, but like telling him what I did and all the things. And I felt so like he cared. And I remember I left that table and I walked to my gate and I did nothing wrong. But I left and I called my girlfriend immediately and I said, I have to tell you what happened because if I don't tell you, I'm going to be looking for that next time I'm at an airport.

And I told Aaron when I got home and again, nothing happened. There wasn't even like a conversation except for our jobs, but I remember what I felt like. And I remember that feeling. And that's what Aaron was talking about.

It's that everyone wants that somewhere. And I have no idea what was going on in our life. I'm sure everything was just fine. But in that moment, and so that's what I always remember is those moments. And if that happens, Aaron told a story, I told a story. You guys could all tell stories where you have felt cheered on and encouraged by someone that wasn't your spouse. I think it's important to bring that to the light even.

Me too. Because me telling Aaron, me calling my friend, Amanda was me going, Hey, I need everyone to know about this. So I now I'm accountable that the next time I'm at an airport and someone starts, I remember that conversation. And so just to encourage someone.

And also to encourage somebody, what you said earlier, I mean, that's a great word. I'm not sure which one of you said it. It was me.

It was probably, yeah. I'll share both of you. Both of you said it. I want to be my spouse's biggest cheerleader. Nobody's going to out cheer me. And that means you have to intentionally do all the things we're just talking about.

See what she's doing, see what he's doing, catch him doing something. Because you're going to see all the negative and just cheer because they could be pulled away by it. It's a magnet. One of my favorite authors, his name is Brennan Manning. He says, every human being possesses the power to step into somebody's life and place the courage into them to simply be by their words of affirmation. And so many times we're waiting for somebody to become something and then encourage them or cheer them on. But part of encouraging someone is placing the courage in them to become the person that they are going to become. You know what I'm saying?

Jesus did it all the time. Absolutely. And we do it in our parenting. Yes. Yeah.

What do you mean by that? We do it in our parenting. Well, I tell my boys all the time, I'm proud of you. Yeah.

I don't know if they did anything good that day, but I want them to know I'm proud of them and they're growing up to be great young men. And so I can do it in my parenting all day long. Yeah. But to do it with your spouse, you might be tempted to go, man, he's just working all the time. He just cares about his job. He's an overachiever.

But instead to go, you know what? I see something in you that's really good. You work really hard, right? That's not like over applauding or just like saying you're awesome. There's an element of truth to that. And it's placing the courage in them to do that better. You know, to say you work really well. I love that part of you.

So you're specific. You're specific and you're placing courage in them that ultimately like a spouse that hears that over and over and over again from their loved one. What if Jamie did that to me, that makes me want to go, man, I want to be a better man for her because she sees something really great in me. I'm not the best man yet, but I want to become a better and better man.

It's motivating. After that moment in our marriage, and again, it was a long drive home. The boo story. The boo story. Boo, boo, boo. Well, it feels like boo.

And again, it's a longer conversation than a couple of months, but she started to cheer me. And the reason I did was because I went to God and I was so mad about the whole thing, but I got on my knees and I said, God, is that true? Do I boo Dave? And he said, yes. And I was mad at God, like, don't I don't, I was arching with him. And so my prayer was, God, show me the greatness in Dave because God sees the greatness in all of us. That's pretty. And he called me to start looking for it and then call it out. So it gave me new eyes. It didn't change in a week, but around time, just like you were saying, she started to call me a great man, a great husband.

I think one day she even got a cheerleader sweater and had a big D on it. Isn't that cool? It was really cool.

It wasn't for Detroit or Dallas, it was for Dave, but anyway, that never happened. But I just remember something came alive in my soul. And I used to say, men, you know, come alive when they're respected. I think it's men and women, it's not just men, you know, when your spouse or somebody you're running to that place because it lifts you up. I remember when I was at home with the kids and, you know, all of our kids are teenagers and so they go to school every day, which gives me an opportunity to work more.

Tell us how old they are, 17, 15, 15 and 13. So big kids. But I remember when I was a stay at home mom and anyone that has been in those shoes know, it's not only exhausting, but a lot of times it feels unrewarding. Absolutely. I mean, you're just like, it's Groundhog Day over and over and no one cheers you on.

Speaking of cheering, they just demand things from you. But I'll never forget this, one year Aaron gave me for my birthday, a membership to a coworking space and a coworking where I could go and work for a day, I don't know what we were going to do with the kids. And a computer.

And a computer. And here I was at home feeling as though God was putting a dream in me to do something different than what I had done previously to having kids. I was a teacher and a coach and I really felt God stirring something and I had said something to him, but I mean, I'm day to day mom. And he gave that to me and he said, I want you to have this computer and I want you to have these days at this coworking space and we'll figure the kids out. And I remember feeling like he sees that there's more to me than just making sandwich lunches and goldfish and driving preschool every day. So many goldfish.

So many goldfish. And I just remember feeling so encouraged and it was years later, you guys, before I did anything with that computer or the job I do now. But it doesn't have to be a computer, it doesn't have to be a coworking space, but there is an opportunity as spouses to look at them and say, I see something in you that maybe you don't even see yet. So as you're sharing that, wait, wait, wait, you're teary as you're sharing that because it meant so much. It meant so much to me because he saw me and as a stay at home mom, so often we feel unseen.

And I love that season of staying home. I'm grateful. That is a privilege that a lot of women in this world don't have.

And so I would never change that for anything. But to be seen by Aaron when he went every day to work and I thought, well, that must be nice. Yeah. You have a lunch meeting. Okay.

And everybody's cheering him. Yeah. But I felt so seen and it really, it meant a lot to me. Aaron, what prompted you to do that? I probably did something wrong with the day before and I was like, I got to figure out something. I've had people believe things about me that I didn't believe about myself and maybe it wasn't always a gift.

It could have just been a word or whatever. And so, you know, when somebody is that important to you, like a spouse, I just wanted to have like eyes open and I've always seen Jamie as more than just like who she is today because she's, she's awesome. And I don't know, just having eyes wide open to see what are all the unique things that make you who you are, that makes you different than everybody else on the planet.

And how can I pour fuel on those little fires? You know, it was really that. And I say that not as like how awesome I am. I'm saying we've had that intentionality grow in our marriage. We didn't start out that way, but the more we experienced what it feels like to be cheered on, the more you look for opportunities to cheer the other person on. So it might just start with little baby steps, you know? Because the stories you're hearing, these are, you know, sometimes 20 years, 10 years into marriage.

And I think you grow and you mature and you develop, you learn how to use muscles in a different way. I wouldn't have probably done that the first six months of our marriage. So my encouragement is take one step forward in seeing something in your spouse and cheer them on in that way.

It might be a gift, it might be a card, it might be a date night of just you going, I'm going to, here's 10 things I really love about you. That's sweet. And I know that I've told Ann and she's the best in the world at it. I mean, nobody cheers me like this woman.

You're so nice. I mean, this is the woman I said boos me, right? She's just an amazing cheerleader now and I watched her do it with our boys. And you know, earlier you said, you know, stay at home moms need to be cheered. And it's so true, but so do men. Even men that have jobs that where we get cheered, you come home and you're like, does she see? Yeah.

Do they see? Right. This kind of thing. I mean, I would say to the listener, find something every day. It's actually possible. Oh yeah. So like once a day at least. Yeah.

Just find a moment in the day. Yeah. I mean, Ann no longer gives me love cards. They're not love cards. They're cheer cards. We don't call them cheer cards, but you know, she knew the love cards. I was like, oh, you love me. And I threw it away, you know, and now she writes these things she's seen and they're in a drawer and I can pull every one of them out because they're affirming and they bring life to a man or a woman, to a son or a daughter, to a neighbor. Yeah.

Do you imagine your neighbors, if they saw you as the ones that cheered them, it's just going to draw them to Christ. I'm going to say one more thing for these stay at home moms. What Aaron had to learn to do was that when he was coming home, however long it took him to get from the office to home, that was his decompression time. He didn't get to come in and lay in the recliner for the hour.

Like we don't do that at our house. You come home, you get to be dad and husband. And I had to learn that when Aaron comes home, I actually wanted those first 10 minutes they walked in the door to be for me. And so the kids all excited, dad's home, dad's home, dad's home. But I get those first minutes.

What's that look like? Because I needed that. I had not talked to anybody all day, you know, I've been in the car all day listening to Veggie Tales. And so I needed those first 10 minutes. And we had to work through that because until Aaron realized the time home is what I get, you know, you don't get to come in and decompress. And for me, I didn't get to just stay in the kitchen and wave at him when he walked in. Like, we needed to have a moment. Because if you've got little kids, you don't get that again till 830. And so I think that was really good when we had little kids was to decide, okay, when you walk in the door, we need 10 minutes. And that's either just tell me how your day was or how was your day or let's hug, kiss, whatever it looks like. Put the TV on, throw out some Cheerios, guys, mom and dad will be in the kitchen for 10 minutes.

And just make time for each other. And it's intentional. It never happens. You can't talk about it.

And it's good. I mean, people can think, oh, but our kids need us. No, no, they don't.

What their kids need is they need to watch your parents. Oh, marriage is a priority. Yeah, this is important. Right. Yeah. And you just modeled compliment. That's right.

Because you spoke the truth. Mm hmm. And you heard and it complimented one another. Yeah. Yeah. I know you know that. But I was just like, that's a beautiful thing.

Because a lot of times we think I don't want to share something that's hurtful. That's not cheering. But no, sometimes the truth and love package well, leads to a beautiful compliment of Cheerios. Absolutely.

That's right. Marriage. Well, we've been listening to the cheer squad. Dave and Ann Wilson talking with Aaron and Jamie Ivey about the importance of being cheerleaders for one another. You talked about booing and being negative. And some people will say, well, I don't do that. Silence. I mean, imagine playing a sports game.

Players have had to deal with this. They go into arenas today and there's nobody cheering for them. And that feels like a boo when we're silent with one another.

Yeah. And can you imagine if there were fans sitting there and not saying anything? It's like your spouse sitting there and there's no comment.

It feels like a very loud boo. Have you heard about this? This is something that happens at Taylor University. Oh, yeah. You told us this.

This is fascinating. Every year they have a basketball game where for the first, I think it's until their team gets to 10 points, the fans all show up and are completely silent. And at first it freaked the other team out completely. And then everybody's kind of prepped for it now. But when they get to point 10, the place erupts with raucous like they won the Super Bowl kind of thing.

Well, yeah, that's silent arena. When that's true in your marriage. When you're not speaking proactively, words of encouragement and edification makes a huge difference.

I think it demotivates us and we stop trying as hard. And I'm going to tell you guys one more thing that's not good. When your wife comes out and she says, how do I look? And you could either say nothing or even fine.

That right there is a bad thing, too. You might as well be booing. So stunning is the appropriate answer, right? Or just great.

It doesn't have to be stunning like great, but you don't lie. But I'm just saying, are you talking to me right now or is this to the listener? I'm helping the listener. Your conversation has helped the listeners and we hope our listeners will get a copy of the books that Aaron and Jamie have written. And I say books because they've taken the same subject, the same chapters. And Aaron has written a book for husbands and Jamie has written a book for wives.

They come packaged together. We are making them available to Family Life Today listeners. If you will make a donation to support the ministry this month, to help extend the reach of what we're doing here at Family Life, to help us help more people more often with practical biblical help and hope for their marriage, we'll send you these books as our thank you gift. In addition, whatever donation you make today is going to be matched dollar for dollar up to a total of $250,000. We've had some friends of the ministry who have come to us and said, we'll match every donation in the month of May as a way to help advance the ministry of family life and to encourage you to be a part of the work that God is doing here. So you make a donation either online at familylifetoday.com or by calling 1-800-FL-TODAY.

You'll get the Ivy's books and your donation will be matched dollar for dollar. Go to familylifetoday.com to make your online donation or call us right now at 1-800-FL-TODAY. Thanks in advance for helping to extend the reach of this ministry and for investing really what you're investing in is the lives, the marriages, the families of hundreds of thousands of people who every day are coming to Family Life for help and hope.

So thanks for making that happen. Now, tomorrow we're going to talk about how important it is for us as parents to be regularly praying for our children and at the same time teaching our children how to pray. Nancy Guthrie is going to join us for that. I hope you can be with us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Bruce Goff, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow.