Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast

Episode 159 | Is God Good? Why It Matters!

• Travis Rosinger and Dawn Rosinger

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Can you imagine a friend who is available often but suddenly when you need them the most they can't be found. Because of their absence and lack of availability, you are left to deal with some of the most difficult circumstances in life on your own. That's what is so great about our Heavenly Father. He is a good God because He is ALWAYS there when you need Him most, and He never closes up shop and goes home for the night. God's goodness and His willingness to love us, provide protection, and the peace we need in life is priceless. When you think about it, God's goodness is everywhere in our world today, even in your marriage.

Join hosts Travis and Dawn Rosinger as they discuss the goodness of God and how good God actually is. He is so good that His goodness and availability can be trusted. He is so good that we can go to Him with hope to present our needs knowing that He is going to come through on our behalf in ways where we can anticipate His help and often in ways we could never imagine. This is an episode that is sure to encourage you and your spouse to look for the goodness of God in your lives and marriage. Listen together!!

Travis and Dawn Rosinger are the Loving The Fight Marriage Podcast Hosts and Authors of the books, Verbalosity - 7 Steps to a Verbally Generous and More Fulfilling Marriage and their newest book, Gripping -  What Matters Most | A Life and Relationships That Hold on to You

For more information about Travis and Dawn Rosinger go to Loving The Fight

Travis Rosinger:

Hey, everyone, I think it's time for us to talk about life, about love and everything that has to do with Jesus, specifically focused on marriage. Well, hey, with that, we want to welcome you back to the Loving the Fight Marriage podcast.

Dawn Rosinger:

Hey everyone, so great to be with you today. My name is Dawn and I'm sitting here with my husband and my co-host, travis.

Travis Rosinger:

Yep, that's right. I'm right next to you, dawn, but I am really excited that we get to hang out with all of you guys today that are listening, and again, we just wanted to kind of catch up with you and share something that happened to us recently. In fact, it was what? Like a week ago, we were not in our home in the Minneapolis, minnesota area. Instead, we jumped on an airplane actually about a week and a half ago and we began to fly down to Texas.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, the big, huge state of Texas, it's huge, yeah, the great state of Texas, and so we decided to fly down there and have a Gulf of Mexico kind of beach vacation.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah we flew into Houston and we rented a car and we went to Galveston Island and got to hang out on the ocean for six nights it was glorious.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it was so cool because it was such a unique beach experience. We had a condo that overlooked the beach and we're able to sip coffee and just look at the waves every morning. But it was wild because Galveston is super interesting, not like a normal beach town like we would maybe have experienced in the past. Part of what made it so cool is you didn't see the normal, typical, like palm trees on the beach no huh. Instead they have a 10-mile long seawall that's actually like the world's biggest sidewalk. It's like a road that you can run down and you can ride bikes down.

Dawn Rosinger:

Right next to the beach. So if you want to take some stairs down, you can just go down there and then you can just walk the whole beach in the sand. So you have both options. You can run, but if you don't want to get sand in your tennis shoes, you can run on the sidewalk. It's great.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it's really cool because it's 10 miles, a beach too, and so every day we would wake up and we would run and, man, there was a couple days we got in 30,000 steps we have so many miles in last week.

Dawn Rosinger:

It was crazy.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh, it was a blast All under the sun, by the way, too, oh yeah.

Dawn Rosinger:

And, yeah, 75, 80 degrees every day. One day was a little windy, but you know what my favorite part was. What's that? Well, almost every day we would take a long walk on the beach. No, actually, we'd start running. We'd run three and a half four miles and then we would put in our AirPods.

Dawn Rosinger:

From day to day, we would take turns picking out different messages and we would listen to a message as we were walking back and then we would talk about it and it was so good because here we were getting this physical exercise and, you know, making our body stronger. But then spiritually, we were just hearing amazing messages and we just got a chance to really just talk about God things, which is so fun. If you guys don't do that with your spouses, I just recommend taking time within your week where you just stop in and talking about God. And we had some great conversations, just got to dig into some deeper issues. And then this there was one or two days where we just talked about life and you know, and what our goals were and what we're looking forward to, and it was just so much Fun. It was great, but the whole time walking or running.

Travis Rosinger:

Yes, it was awesome, and we kind of had a deeper level of intimacy in a weird sort of way in this public beach area. We ended up each using our AirPods, but we linked them to one phone.

Dawn Rosinger:

Right, we shared our AirPods, even though we both had two different sets.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it was fun listening to one podcast, one pastor, Just a message from a weekend at a church, some of the pastors that we really like, and so we would hear it together at the same time and then just having that chance to talk about it. You're right, Don, spectacular trip went to some restaurants and rented a scooter, drove all over the island and got to go for a boat ride in the main kind of shore area or what do you call it Bay?

Dawn Rosinger:

A ton of dolphins like 50 dolphins probably just jumping. I have never seen that many dolphins in my entire life. Ever they just kept jumping. I don't know if it's mating season or what, but there was a ton of dolphins?

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, I've never seen that many before, and somebody told me recently that when you see a group of dolphins together they're called a pod. I don't know if that's true, but you're right. I think we saw about 50 at one time and it was just the craziest thing. We were on this boat, we're in the harbor or, you know, kind of on the ocean and all these dolphins so much fun and gorgeous in the sun. Well, hey guys, yeah, our vacation went really well. It was nice to get away to really plug into each other, plug into God, get some great new, fresh memories together as a couple to build up our marriage. But you know, our trip, our vacation, actually didn't start off very well, did it, Don Nope.

Dawn Rosinger:

I was kind of concerned, Actually, by the way it started, like oh no, and we were going to a new area. So I'm like, oh no, what if the whole vacation's horrendous? Like there was this fear that's set in, you know, because of what happened in the beginning, within the first few minutes after getting off the plane.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, what happened was is we quickly grabbed our luggage. It was just carry on luggage.

Dawn Rosinger:

Again. We landed in Houston, so we jumped off the plane there, which is a big airport.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, a city of seven million, the metro area, huge airport, huge city. But we just had our carry on luggage, we didn't have check bags, so we just stopped to go to the bathroom really quick, jumped on our shuttle to go pick up our rental car, to go to the rental car center. We get there. I mean, we busted our tails to get there. We had reserved it or paid for it to start at 10.30, but our plane maybe landed at 10.35, something like that, 10.40.

Dawn Rosinger:

And so we got on that shuttle, got over there and we walked into the rental car center and it was like 11.05, I think by the time we got there and just going straight there, but because we had to take that shuttle.

Travis Rosinger:

Yes, and so when we walked in, we were amped. We were like, okay, this starts our vacation Once they hand you the keys, then you're like, okay, we're on vacation, and then just driving out of the airport. Well, that's not what happened, did it? No, not at all. Everything went sideways the minute we walked into this rental car center because we started to walk up to the company and we won't name the companies, but we started to walk up to this rental car company.

Dawn Rosinger:

And it was a very reputable company. Actually, we went with a reputable company because we were going into a new area and wanted to make sure that we had a car.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, it's one of the best, actually probably number one or number two in the nation, at least here in the United States and so we walked up we had reserved this rental car. I think a couple months ago walked up to go get our keys and pay for this rental car or we had already reserved it but to pick it up and there was no one there.

Dawn Rosinger:

No, the lights were off on the whole desk it was horrible. Every other car company, the lights were on and people were there, except for this one.

Travis Rosinger:

This big, reputable car company and, by the way, we've picked up rental cars before at like one, two o'clock in the morning, and so we were like where is everybody?

Dawn Rosinger:

So there was a sign it said to go outside to the kiosk. Outside we're like, oh well, they're just outside, that makes sense, you know, we can go out there. And there was a few other people around us and we were kind of all, kind of had this day's look on our face. But we went outside and went to the kiosk and no one was there.

Travis Rosinger:

No one was there. No one was there at all.

Dawn Rosinger:

Except actually there was people there. It was people looking for this company for their cars.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and what was crazy is we then turn around from that outdoor kiosk, came back in. None of the employees were around and when we came back in, by then we had already had 10, 15 people that kept coming just like us and they were all looking for their car, like you just said.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yeah, we were all in the same boat.

Travis Rosinger:

you could tell and everybody was melting down Like one girl just dropped on the floor and she opened her laptop and she was freaking out. And all these other, you know, families and couples and people just like us that had gone through this rental car company. They just wanted to pick up their car and we're like, oh no, what are we going to do? Are we stuck here? So I did what I figured might be the best possible decision. I picked up the phone. I called the rental car company, their customer service line, and I just said hey, we're here to get our car. We reserved it, we paid for it, you know, at 10.30. It's 11.05. Your person's gone. How are we going to get our car? And they just said sir, we're sorry, but we closed at 11 o'clock. You should have been there at 10.30. Our person went home and you're just going to have to come back at 7 o'clock the next morning.

Dawn Rosinger:

They're like wait, you closed at 11 o'clock. It's an international airport. Every other car you know dealership, they were all open, they're all open, except for this one. I'm like what? And they didn't say that? They didn't warn us ahead of time, I didn't say it on the internet, nothing. They allowed us to rent a car at 10.30. You know, or when, knowing our plane was coming in at 10.30., knowing that there's a shuttle. I don't know why there was actually another lady there. She's like I just rented my car, like 10 minutes ago.

Travis Rosinger:

Yes, I remember that.

Dawn Rosinger:

They're not here.

Travis Rosinger:

Oh my gosh. So this poor?

Dawn Rosinger:

gal. She only had a thought for sure that there would be a car there because she just rented it and they were closed.

Travis Rosinger:

They rented it to her while they were closed. I think so. I'm talking to the guy, I'm on customer service, talking to the rental car company and he's just basically saying look, you got two choices you can sleep in the rental car area where you rent them, this building or rental car center, or you could just get an Uber and go to a $200, $300 night hotel.

Dawn Rosinger:

And come back at 6 am. Yeah, we opened again at 6. We're, like you know, like 11, 05, 11, 10. We are not going to wait in this airport until 6 am in the morning. Yeah.

Travis Rosinger:

Well, I kept trying to talk to this guy, kept trying to get it. You know, come up with a solution like, hey, can you drop off a car you know from another one of your, you know companies nearby, and just talking to him wasted my time. But, don, you did something while I was on the phone. You disappeared. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. We have no car and now my wife is gone. But what were you doing? Why don't you tell everybody I?

Dawn Rosinger:

was actually at a site. You know, I better be proactive because this is not going well right now. There's like 10 other people looking for a car as well. I need to just find us a car, because I was worried that if we didn't move quick enough, that suddenly the other companies were going to close or there would be no cars left. So I just went up to another pretty reputable company that didn't have a line. The rest of them had lots of lines.

Dawn Rosinger:

I went to them with no line and I said, by any chance, do you happen to have a car? And she's like well, is it going to be round trip? That's that we only have round trip cars? I'm like, yes, I only need it until next Tuesday and I'm like I'm thinking she's going to charge like $1,000, I'm sure like for six days, because it's just last minute and she looked at me and she's like no, we actually do have a car, what size you want.

Dawn Rosinger:

And she gave us, like it was a bigger car than we were going to get. It was, I think, honestly even a little bit cheaper. And she's like, oh yeah, here we go. And I'm like, no way, like she has a car ready for us Like we can leave right now.

Travis Rosinger:

How is this possible?

Dawn Rosinger:

But you weren't around so I was like, just a second hold on, I will be right back. And I went to find you because you were still down by the other company.

Travis Rosinger:

Still hanging out with all these upset people who their vacations just literally came to a crashing home. And so we both ran over things to you. We ran over to this other you know really major company and we paid for the car, we got the keys, got in our car and we started driving. Well, hey, why are we telling you guys about this story? Why are we sharing with you how our vacation came to a grinding halt and what happened?

Travis Rosinger:

Well, because this story reminds us of the goodness of God, the goodness of God in life, you know, and our relationships with him, but also even in our marriage. You know, the goodness of God, we're here, we're trying to get away and we're trying to have an incredible, you know, time as a couple, a married couple. It's around the time of our anniversary, so, you know, this is our chance to get away and really bond together, and so we just walked away and we can't kind of just thought about it. We were like that was a terrible experience and yet really a fun story, a fun adventure, and we knew right away we have to share that in our podcast.

Travis Rosinger:

Absolutely.

Dawn Rosinger:

Again, we always are looking for stories in our week. You know that can relate to marriage and just life and that was our life and I'm like that's a great story, like let's share it.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and what's so cool is you know I don't know if I can talk too much about the goodness of God Like God is so good to us, his children, to you and to me and so it's really fun to just stop and go wow, where is God in this? And so, as we look back at this experience and it reminded us of the goodness of God you know that first rental car company that we went to it kind of reminded us of evil, how evil will bait us with something that looks good, like come here, use our car, but oh, by the way, we're not going to be here when you get here. And that's what evil does. It tries to tempt us and baits us, but then it quickly pulls away anything that has a fiber or a thread of goodness and we're just left with guilt. We're left feeling and knowing that we have harmed ourselves.

Travis Rosinger:

But that's not what God is like. God is like that company that never closes up shop, like the one that was open, and that's the goodness of God. God is always with us, he's always available and he's always there in the midst of our pain and our marriages Right, absolutely, and our relationships. Don, you and I had some challenges in our marriage this summer in terms of just some things that happened to us as a couple, not so much between you and I, but just as a couple. Some different things that we had, hurdles that we had to overcome, are things that T-boned us, and that's why it's so cool to know that God is always available.

Travis Rosinger:

He's always there, like that company that stayed open. I think they were going to be open all night. You know the one. The other one that shut down is like the devil. But God is so good, right, he never shuts down. What does that mean? You know what? He's actually the one place. God is the one place that we can go to when things are going well and life feels like a vacation, and he's the one place that we can go to when life feels terrible, like we've been abandoned, like we're stuck to sleep on the floor of some strange environment that's taking place in our family or in our lives.

Dawn Rosinger:

As I was thinking about this rental company that I had gone and found. This lady was so kind and she was so compassionate. She was awesome.

Dawn Rosinger:

And she was like I'm so sorry that this happened. And she found me another car and I was like, wow, that is goodness, and just the compassion and the mercy. And it makes me think of the verse in Psalms 145, 8. And it says the Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. The Lord is good to everyone, he showers compassion on all his creation. And that is the goodness of God. Think of that, you guys. He is merciful and compassionate, slow to get anger, filled with unfailing love. Good to everyone, showers with compassion, like now, that's goodness. I can't even put into words what that means. That's incredible to know that. That is the God in heaven, our Father in heaven. That's what he when he looks down on us. That's who he is.

Travis Rosinger:

It's absolutely who he is. And what's so cool is everything that God offers us in our marriages, in our relationships with him, in our relationships with others. You know everything that God offers us that has his goodness on it. It's always better than anything this world offers. Oh, absolutely, it's better than anything that evil tries to tempt us with or to offer at us.

Travis Rosinger:

And another passage that really, I think, speaks to this. It's out of Psalms 103, verse 1. It says let all that I am praise the Lord, with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. But he doesn't stop just saying it twice, he says it again in verse 2. Let all that I am praise the Lord. And that's what the goodness of God does. It makes us praise the Lord. And then he goes on and he says you know what it is that differentiates God and why. You know as far as those characteristics of goodness. He says man never forget the good things that God does for me. He forgives all my sins, he heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies. He fills my life with good things. My youth is renewed, like the egos.

Dawn Rosinger:

Wow, that's incredible, that's awesome.

Travis Rosinger:

Man, that's what God does.

Dawn Rosinger:

It is. It's so cool to know, like, in the midst of our like frustration, our you know anger, our like hesitation, like, oh, my word, this, something's good, it's supposed to be happening. He was supposed to go on vacation and, honestly, in the midst of those moments, god was there, like he didn't bail on us. He I mean the goodness of God came out of, like he provided a way out for us in that situation. And that's so minor, honestly, it's not that big of a deal.

Travis Rosinger:

It really is.

Dawn Rosinger:

Yes, you know that will say one of those first world problems, because we have so much here that we have, you know, can be grateful for. But, honestly, god is a good God and there is times when in our life where God has just been faithful over and over and over again. I had a time just this last week where I had a difficult moment and I was able to share it with my coworkers. I'm like you know what I'm going through, something right now. Can you pray for me? And my team came around me and they put their hands on me and they prayed for me and, man, did I just feel the goodness of God just come through them? And as they were praying for me and I was so encouraged and it was just an incredible feeling that I just knew that God was there. But God used people in that moment to just fill me with his goodness.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and I think in order for us to really truly, you know, celebrate God's goodness, like the Psalmist says you know he repeats it three times I'm going to praise him with my whole heart, like three times. I think part of that is doing what you did, don is looking for the goodness of God in the midst of a difficult moment, and you realize the goodness of God is in the community of faith that he's placed around you, and I think that's what we need to do in our marriages as well. Last week, in our previous episode, we talked about, you know, that downward, counterfactual thinking that, hey, things could always be worse. But today we're, you know, kind of it's similar, but we're really focusing on just the goodness of God and looking for that goodness. And even in your marriage, in your relationship, guys, things could always be worse. So start pointing out to yourself and being thankful with your spouse about the goodness of God, like what has God given you and what are those things that you can be grateful for.

Dawn Rosinger:

Not only what has God given you in life, but what has God given you in each other. Like I can look at you, travis, and I can see the goodness of God. The goodness of God is working through you and how you love me and how you care for me and how you treat me, and hopefully you can see that in me as well. But I can just honestly, through you, see God's goodness. Like I'm very grateful for that.

Travis Rosinger:

Yeah, and I think there are some of you listening right now where maybe that feels like a stretch for you, or maybe you're just really struggling in your marriage, or maybe you're feeling kind of like I've done to Don before. I've driven her crazy before. There's been, you know, moments where I'm having a bad day and she's putting up with me Well, not fully crazy, but just yeah, Right, you're still kind of you're still sane, right, kind of sane.

Travis Rosinger:

I've pushed you to the edge of insanity at times, but some of you are probably like I feel that way about my spouse. But I want you to know God, the other part of God's goodness, and I love what the psalmist does. He like what we just read in Psalm 103, he's listing those things out. Here's what God does for me, here's the good things that he gives me. And so I think one of those things is that God brings miracles. God can cause a miracle to take place in your marriage, in your relationship, in your feelings or the lack of feelings that you have for your spouse, because you've frustrated each other so much. And the psalmist says that and he's like God heals me of all my diseases, he gives me strength, and so just think of that today and ask God for that miracle. God is good, he loves you, he's with you and your spouse. So believe and pray and have faith and be positive, and God is going to get you through, no matter what you're going through right now.

Dawn Rosinger:

Well, with that, we just want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Loving the Fight Marriage Podcast. Remember, guys, you can do it. You got this. Keep loving the fight. We'll see you next time.